by Tenebris

Created on: September 08, 2010

On March 30, 2010, two beams collided at 7 TeV at the Large Hadron Collider, setting the world record for the highest energy man-made particle collisions to date. The first article based on previous, lower energy LHC collisions has been completed as of March 7. Its results show that 10-14% more charged kaons and pions had been produced than expected, suggesting that the previous models upon which all predictions and assessments of safety have been based are not entirely accurate. Debate is already active about how this should not matter to the overall research model. Thus begins the LHC research program,

the greatest physics experiment in the world.

Society has divided itself into two parts: those who unquestioningly accept the authority of the scientist in the realm of science, and those who question. Those who accept the authority of science also accept its ability to self-regulate. Others wonder.

Language has divided itself along the same lines. Even "good" science and "bad" science means something vastly different to the scientist than to the non-scientific community. To a scientist, "bad" science means only that methodology or premise is flawed or results have been fudged. It has nothing whatsoever to do with whether the research should have taken place. For "good" science, the basis for the hypothesis must be valid, the logic clear, and results and conclusion must follow logically from the premise and means. To the holy grail of peer review, these are the only relevant factors. Ethics and risk are outside its purview.

Because most of us feel more strongly about human life and human living cells than we do about some distant chemicals or atoms, stem cell research and human genetic engineering have become the primary battlefield of language. In much of the research in these fields, a possible future discovery which holds the potential to be helpful to humankind requires the current sacrifice of living cells, hundreds of thousands of living cells. Some of those cells might otherwise have become human beings. Yet if the methodology, premise, and results are sound, peer review will always find human stem cell research to be "good" science.

And so we are left with law as the only approximation of ethics which might dictate a common language.

The exercise of law is based on an accumulation of evidence and testimony. Yet where the law touches highly specialised, cutting edge science, we immediately run into problems. Cutting edge science may hypothesise an expected

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