The brouhaha surrounding the start of the LHC was both pleasantly surprising and surprisingly disappointing. It was certainly refreshing to see basic science in the news for a change. News coverage is especially important and appropriate for big science projects like the LHC, due to the huge investment of public funds such projects require. (Note that by big science I mean large-scale science projects, not the fictitious conspiracy against Intelligent Design alluded to in Ben Stein’s epic fail Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed.) As for my disappointment, I am of course referring to the un- and anti-scientific first sentence of this week’s titular statement.
The venerable and reputable news sources generally did a good job dealing with the pseudoscience surrounding the LHC startup, merely mentioning unspecified people’s concerns and usually citing reasons why they were unfounded. Less reputable news sources, especially online news sites and blogs, often credulously took the pseudoscientific bait hook, line, and sinker. If they didn’t totally chug the doomsday kool-aid and “report” that we’re all gonna die!!1!, they at least called for the LHC startup plans to be hold on hold and everything re-examined.
That’s Fraunken-shteen; Or, Fighting the Mad Scientist Stereotype
Please note that I said re-examined in that last sentence. Scientists check for these sorts of things. The proposed LHC experiments were simulated long ago in a worse-case-scenario manner, precisely to ensure that the machine wouldn’t destroy the world. As a historical example, the Manhattan Project scientists were worried that the Trinity test in New Mexico might ignite the atmosphere in a runaway nuclear chain reaction. As such, the scientists did extensive calculations before the test to make sure that this wouldn’t happen. I’ve even heard admittedly-dubious stories that the top brass at Los Alamos didn’t tell their number-crunchers what they were working on, so that the results wouldn’t be biased.
Allow me one more quick aside for another example of scientists/engineers and their predilection for worst-case-scenario planning. I recently went to a presentation on the future of nuclear power, and the speaker went over how new nuclear power plants will be designed to withstand a direct hit from a fully-fueled passenger jet without releasing even a gram of radioactive material into the environment. Tell that to the next misguided environmentalist that tells you nuclear power plants are dangerous. Or, if you happen to be one of those misguided environmentalists, read that sentence aloud to yourself a few times. Am I saying scientists’ contingency plans are perfect, or are perfectly implemented? Of course not. But, give them some credit!
Back to the topic at hand, the LHC was built specifically to test theoretical predictions. Scientists didn’t just get together and decide “let’s build the biggest atom-smasher we can to see what we can blow up!” The sole purpose of this machine is to test a vast body of mathematical physics predictions in the real world. Theoretical physicists have been pushing our current models of the universe beyond experimental testability for decades. The LHC will tell us which of those predictions got it right, and which ones will become historical footnotes.
Most importantly, even if you don’t trust those scientists’ and their calculations and theories, collisions similar to those that will occur in the LHC happen regularly in the universe, often in the upper atmosphere of our own planet. Moreover, those collisions are completely uncontrolled and rain particles down all over us, all the time. Since gaping black holes of death aren’t regularly descending upon us and killing everything on the planet, it’s pretty safe to assume that the LHC won’t do that either.
Get Out Your Shovels, We’ve Got a Goalpost to Move
Enough about the media and environmentalists and physicists, what about the people making this week’s claim? Maybe these self-proclaimed eschatologists were just a little off in their apocalyptic predictions. Indeed, looking back, it seems silly to have thought that simply sending a beam around the LHC (what turning it on entailed) would destroy the world. But, when they collide something … hoo boy! That’s when the s--t’s gonna hit the fan! We’re all doomed to spaghettification in a black hole those reckless scientists are sure to create!
What’s going on here is a beautiful example of the moving goalposts logical fallacy. The anti-scientific people who oppose the LHC claimed that the world would end when the machine got turned on. Theories and explanations abound, but my two favorites were that (a) black holes would be created and would consume the entire world or that (b) strangelets would pop out and convert the entire planet into quarks. Regardless of what these people were specifically predicting, nothing catastrophic occurred. So, did these people admit that they were wrong and get on with their lives?
Of course they didn’t. They just moved the goalposts. Since turning on the LHC didn’t kill us all, they’re now predicting that the first collision experiment will be what destroys the world. See what happened there? My anti-scientific label for these folks wasn’t just name-calling after all. Rather than observing evidence and changing their hypotheses based on said evidence, they just desperately clung to their conclusions and arbitrarily pushed back their criterion for correctness. And, when the first LHC experiment destroys only particles and not the entire planet, they’ll move the goalposts again. Let’s diagram this out:
Claim: Turning on the LHC will destroy the earth!
Evidence: Turning on the LHC did not destroy the earth.
Rationale: Er, of course merely turning it on was safe.
Claim: Colliding particles in the LHC will destroy the earth!
Evidence: Colliding particles in the LHC will not destroy the earth.
Rationale: Er, they were just replicating old results.
Claim: Colliding particles at uniquely high energies will destroy the earth!
Evidence: Colliding particles at higher energies will not destroy the earth.
Rationale: Er, we got lucky this time.
Claim: Turning on [the next big accelerator] will destroy the earth!
Evidence: Turning on [the next big accelerator] will not destroy the earth ...
Don’t think I’m trying to predict the future or anything; all this has happened before. The same guys who are at the forefront of the anti-LHC movement also attempted to stop the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider at Brookhaven National Lab in the late 90s. These guys filed frivolous lawsuits, wrote letters, worried about black holes, worried about strangelets ... hey, it’s déjà vu all over again! The only thing that’s changed between the RHIC and the LHC is Web 2.0 letting everyone and their mother go online and freak out about those damn scientists killing us all.
Emulate Al Bundy: Don’t Let Them Move That Goalpost!
A better blogger than I would’ve had this article out in time for the launch of the LHC, but, hey, you get what you pay for. It would have been really great to put this out there before they turned on the LHC, really put my nickel down against the pseudoscientists. But, alas, it didn’t happen. (Unfortunately for me, I’ve got more scruples than your average psychic, so I won’t be editing the posting date to make it look like I divined the safety of the planet ahead of time.)
Besides, the LHC story wound up being a bit of a letdown anyways. The world didn’t end, of course, but there was a malfunction that led to a major temperature rise in the beam and the subsequent damaging of a bunch of superconducting magnets. Between the necessary winter shutdown (I guess they need the energy to heat Zurich … pffft) and the repairs needed to fix this damage, they won’t be back on schedule until the summer of 2009.
Luckily for us, the pseudoscience the LHC’s launch engendered is still ripe for criticism, so we can learn about the moving goalpost fallacy and how it often indicates that people are starting with their conclusions. Good, clean, wholesome skeptical fun for the whole family!