Headline, January29, 2014

''' MOBY DICK BY !WOW! ''' : 

SOME INNOVATION​?!

In a Big Science Project, team with rival proposals spar publicly, forcing all the boffins to articulate their assumptions, justify their choices and learn enough about their rival's ideas to criticise them at length.

One engineer who had left industry to join CERN was bemused, recalls Mr Turtscher, when he told his physicist colleagues that a cooling system could not be made any smaller.

But it turned out that the device could be shrunk by a fifth.

The natural inclination of scientists to challenge authority is given free reign in a big collaboration because individuals are ultimately accountable to   -and don't forget, paid by-  their institutions.

This explains why experiments have  ''spokesmen'', not managers.

The sparring takes a while, but the lifetimes of Big Science Projects are measured in decades. Besides, a good scientific scrap fosters the exchange of ideas and ensures that advocates of losing proposals understand the winning ones, which they are expected to work on.

Battles allow boffins to let off steam, so grudges seldom fester.

The bonhomie of Big Science even rubs off on commercial partners: when one firm working on a NASA space telescope ran out beryllium for components it was making, another offered some of its excess stock.

One way for companies, and even all of us, to emulate Big Science is to employ more scientists.

Simon Williams, co-founder of QuantumBlack, a London based data consultancy, says his visit to CERN   -to seek technical help with number crunching-  prompted him to value PhDs over MBAS.

They can be a handful, Mr William concedes, but they also require less hand-holding. Give them an interesting problem and they will get cracking, he adds with enthusiasm.

Hiring  eggheads  rather than  dunderheads  is generally wise, though it can backfire:

Just ask the banks that employed  ''quants''  by the dozen to create financial instruments that no one ever understood.

As a rule, firms can attract megabrains only if the problems they want to solve are interesting. Basic science meets this criterion; people become scientists to extend the frontiers of knowledge.

For many, it is an obsession. The only banter a highly respected journalist ever heard-  on a visit to the CERN canteen concerned physics.

'''The television screens were all tuned to live feeds from experiments  -on a Saturday morning. Few firms inspire such commitment; and no mission statement or desk massage will change that.

 AT&T even had a pure-math department. So? The snag is that only the best companies can enjoy the luxury of picking the best brains and let them roam.

To me, students with liberal art degrees are very very useful. We only have to get better at using their talent.

To joke, think the pointy haired boss in the  ''Dilbert'' cartoons, who once tried to improve a product design by scribbling out a timing circuit and writing in :  ''Moby Dick by Charles Dickens'', is fortunately, a caricature.

But the fact remains, that the whole world and especially the students of the world, have much much to learn from the beautiful world of the lab-coats.  

With respectful dedication to all the scientists of the world. See Ya all, Sirs' on !WOW! the World Student Society Computers-Internet-Wireless:

''' On The March '''

Good Night & God Bless!

SAM Daily Times - the Voice of the Voiceless