Big Science - Criticism

Criticism

The era of Big Science has provoked criticism that it undermines the basic principles of the scientific method. Results of experiments which require massive and unique machines like particle accelerators are often difficult to verify. Access to scientific facilities is often limited to those who are already accomplished, leading to charges of elitism. And increased government funding has often meant increased military funding, which some claim subverts the Enlightenment-era ideal of science as a pure quest for knowledge. For example, historian Paul Forman has argued that during World War II and the Cold War, the massive scale of defense-related funding prompted a shift in physics from basic to applied research.

Many scientists also complain that the requirement for increased funding makes a large part of the scientific activity filling out grant requests and other budgetary bureaucratic activity, and the intense connections between academic, governmental, and industrial interests have raised the question of whether scientists can be completely objective when their research contradicts the interests and intentions of their benefactors.

In addition, widespread sharing of scientific knowledge is necessary for rapid progress for both basic and applied sciences. The powerful interests that control Big Science-type projects can impede progress by limiting this sharing. For example, scientific findings can be classified by military interests or patented by corporate ones. Grant competitions, while they stimulate interest in a topic, can also increase secretiveness among scientists because application evaluators may value uniqueness more than incremental, collaborative inquiry.