مقاله سال ۲۰۱۶

During the past decades the necessary funds for research facilities of front research increased considerably. In most cases government funding is required, in particular for basic research. Hence it is not surprising that funding agencies are looking for more ‘objective’ criteria to evaluate new projects, in a time when decision takers hesitate to take the full responsibility and rather try to protect themselves behind a curtain of ‘transparency’. Within such a general tendency cost/benefit analysis (C/BA) has and will become an important instrument since they offer a methodological frame to analyse the value of a project. C/BA has been developed mainly for commercial or industrial projects where the cost and benefits can clearly be expressed in terms of cash. Recently the demand came up to apply C/BA also to scientific infrastructure projects (Martin, 1996). In view of the fact that the cost of some projects of scientific facilities is reaching or going beyond the 1000 million EUR this seems to be a justified request.

Scientists should welcome such efforts to accompany the decision making process by a quantitative analysis and thus provide a greater public accountability. However, whereas the cost of a scientific infrastructure can rather objectively be determined, it is a much more diffi- cult task to quantify in accountable terms the benefits of a scientific project and to show that its net contribution to the society is positive. To apply C/BA to infrastructure projects of particle physics is particularly demanding, since the results have a cultural value and the resulting benefits are extremely difficult to quantify.

Indeed some time ago the OECD (1994) studied the socio-economic benefits of Particle Physics and some of the main results of the study were: – The main reasons for particle physics are cultural; the resulting benefits are somewhat intangible and difficult to quantify. – Certainly no rigorous cost/benefit analysis is possible. Research into the fundamental workings of the Universe, such as that performed by particle physics, enriches our culture and helps to stimulate other scientific fields. – Perhaps its largest immediate impact is in the area of education: the questions the field attempts to answer, the sophisticated instrumentation it uses, and the exciting results it provides all act as important stimuli in attracting young people into technically oriented education. A better-educated society is the result. – But not to neglect secondary benefits in other fields, (technology transfer) e.g. medicine, computing and networking, electronics, low temperatures… – Better international understanding and setting of models for such co-operations.