From: Steve Biller (Steven.Biller@physics.ox.ac.uk)
Date: Thu Apr 20 2006 - 09:44:29 CDT
Steven Dytman wrote:
> Steve,
> I think he's sain, but politics unfortunately dominates his thinking.
> DOE has well-deserved reputation for caring more about large
> projects (and money) than small ones and physics is secondary.
> They end up making stupid decisions as a result, a long history
> of this. It appears (with blessing of rest of DOE) he wanted to give
> theta13 to the Chinese all along, probably as part of the grand plan
> to 1) get ILC to US and 2) to keep Fermilab going and 3) to keep
> SLAC going. Everything else is at the periphery, e.g the very fine
> collaboration with an excellent plan that we both enjoy. It's sad,
> partly due to the large money now needed to do HEP. I'm not
> enjoying it, but it perhaps makes more sense to me than to you. Like
> you, I will pay dearly for this.
>
> regards,
> Steve
And yet, he wouldn't be giving the Chinese very much at all.
He's trying to significantly slash the money to Daya Bay and
has now even threatened to not fund them. The Chinese have now
clearly stated that they do not need the US and would definitely
go ahead anyway. If this had been his plan all along or
if the real issue was money, all he would have had to say
ages ago is, "there will only be $20M at most available for this"
and that would have cut us out. But no such ceiling was
ever mentioned. Instead, he's led us along for well over a year
with an expectation that it would be possible to get funding
with a strong enough case, and then waited until moments before
the P5 presentation to spring this on us as a surprise with no
time to do anything about it. Even if he used the excuse of a
limited budget now, I wouldn't believe him and we'd have plenty
of reason to question the ludicrous notion that he'd had no
knowledge of this until just before the P5 meeting. The ONLY way
this action can be interpreted is that he is either malicious,
incompetent or insane. I suppose I'm feeling particularly
charitable in suggesting the latter, but I submit that my
model fits the facts better than yours. In all seriousness,
I propose that we adopt this as our default model because
it sets exactly the right focus: we should not waste our
time and energy trying to elucidate any reason or truth
to anything he says or does. However, we should carefully record
his actions to use as evidence when we go to have him committed.
Steve
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