Actual post from Dec. 15 from one of the streams. This is a real topic. As far as promoting women and minorities even if their qualifications are not as good as the white male scientists, I am all for it. We need diversity at the lab and if that is what it takes, so be it. Quit your whining. Look around the lab, what do you see? White male geezers. How many African Americans do you see at the lab? Virtually none. LLNL is one of the MOST undiverse places you will see. Face it folks, LLNL is an institution of white male privilege and they don't want to give up their privileged positions. California, a state of majority Hispanics has the "crown jewel" LLNL nestled in the middle of it with very FEW Hispanics at all!
Comments
Your experience differs from my experience. If you want some measure of the quality of the place this is a potential measure. Sure you can always say it is problematic however I would contend that it still correlated with the scientific quality, rigor and activity of an institution. LANL use to get twice the number of APS fellows as LLNL but not anymore. This must mean something. 15 years ago LANL was ranked in the top 10 of US intuitions in terms of the number of papers, now it is at 100 or even 150 depending on the metric.
I understand that you can dismiss any statistics, any measure or any evidence. Finley you can simply ask people at Universities, at the NNSA labs and other DOE labs if the quality of science at LANL has declined and you will get an overwhelming response that yes it has greatly declined. I guess in your world everyone must be wrong.
Your last paragraph reveals what you are - simply a troll who has nothing to add but your unsupported opinions. "Just ask people..."? Please. That's your data? You have no business on a board related to science and national security.
9/21/2019 8:06 AM"
Is this a LLNL person or a LANL person? I know all the new LANL people and your description does not fit with anyone of the.
I don't know the LLNL people.
I also know how APS fellows are chosen and being a NNSA manager or being responsible for money would have absolutely nothing to do with how the fellows are picked. Now it might get help in you getting nominated but it is your record that determines if you actually get the fellowship. Do you understand how these fellows are chosen from the group of nominations?
I suspect you do not.
In fact all you have to do is look up the record recent fellows and you will see that you have to be at a certain level within your field to get it. I have rarely seen exceptions to this.
Concerning the recent post of 9:58pm, I still don’t think that the number of APS fellows is a very good measure of quality of science at an institution. In addition to the points I made, I think that the poster who wrote “He’s not the sharpest guy, but he is a high level manager with a lot of funding responsibilities. I suspect that has a lot to do with it.” had a point. Not saying that a lot of high level managers aren’t scientifically sharp. Most of them are. But I have to think that the reason that managers of big programs get awarded as APS fellows far out of proportion with their actual numbers has more to do with their visibility and their contacts with influential people than it does with their raw scientific record.
I also recall one scientist I knew at LLNL who, to my surprise, I later discovered was an APS fellow. He was a really nice guy, but not particularly remarkable as far as his scientific record. He had a long history of doing good, competent work, but nothing which really stood out compared to work by other good scientists doing similar work at LLNL. So, yes, I was very surprised to learn that he was an APS fellow.
As for using the total number of peer-reviewed papers, including high-profile papers, by an institution, I think that that is a better measure or at least a better starting point for accessing the level of scientific research done at an institution.
-Doug
(P.S.: This system of everyone being named “Anonymous” and us being only able to distinguish each other by the time stamps of the posts is really awkward. Any way that this posting system can be modified so that posters can enter a name when they post a message so that we can refer to each other by name rather than time stamp?)
9/21/2019 6:50 PM"
Data has been provided for you. The last part about asking people is also data if you ask enough people especially people that may have access to other numbers. Suppose you ask about 10-20 people and get a consistent answer, that is telling you something. You than combine that with other data that is out there. To be honest it is you that seem too have have no clue about how science is conducted.
9/22/2019 1:42 PM
And there's a reason for that. It's because your first sentence is not true. And because that's where the weapon expertise is, still.
Wow that was brutal.
I agree with some of what you are saying.
One of your point: "As for using the total number of peer-reviewed papers, including high-profile papers, by an institution, I think that that is a better measure or at least a better starting point for accessing the level of scientific research done at an institution."
Has actually been addressed there was a couple of studies on this which showed how much LANL has fallen over the last 15 years. This put on the blog a few times. In 2004 LANL had the most papers of any DOE lab, the next three where LBNL, ANL, ORNL. Now LANL lags behind all three of these.
I don't not have the data for this but I would take as a very safe bet that as basic science has fallen at the labs that the quality of the weapons science has also fallen and probably fallen at a faster rate.
One thing I do have numbers on is where the PhD's at least at LANL come from: in 2001 you had something like 25% from the top 5-10 universities like MIT, Princeton, Harvard, Caltech, Stanford, Yale and so on. Now it is closer to 2-3%, or a 10 -7 fold decrease. LANL also had something like 30% postdocs form the UC campuses, now it is less than 10% since the quality of the UC systems is rather high.
Now that Bechtel is out things may improve.
9/22/2019 5:11 PM"
Why not just have that expertise move to LLNL and be done with it.
9/22/2019 7:50 PM
Because they like living in NM, hate CA, and won't move?
9/23/2019 5:29 PM"
First of all how many people are in the talent pool that really matter at LANL, that would that be, 1000 at most. I think at least half would move to California voluntarily and 85% would move if just closed LANL down.
By the way 9/23/2019 9:48 AM is absolutely right that the modern stockpile was completely created by LLNL, so there are many people at LANL who would love to go to LLNL in any case.
LANL gets converted to a production facility, LLNL goes full science and the whole thing works.
9/23/2019 5:44 PM
Oh really? B61, W76, W88?? Designed by LLNL? HaHaHaHa!
"Oh really? B61, W76, W88?? Designed by LLNL? HaHaHaHa!
9/24/2019 5:13 PM"
Excuse me but one of the other posters said this:
"They need to go back to a small group of talented and motivated people, like Johnny Foster had in the early 60’s at LLNL. Those guys singlehandedly invented the modern stockpile, putting a warhead on a submarine launched missile, as LASL watched."
Ok what part of singlehandedly do you not understand?
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Mic Drop.....Cheers~
9/25/2019 2:41 PM"
Ding, ding, ding, ding. Whatever LANL did in the past is irrelevant, the future for NW science is LLNL.
It's not about NW science, it's about new deployable warheads. LLNL loses again. But they'll feel really good about themselves. The "science" part is cancelable by any congress. The deployable weapons part is absolutely necessary for national security.
9/26/2019 5:03 PM
LLNL has the new deplorable warhead according to the Air Force so what are you talking about.
LLNL has the new deplorable warhead according to the Air Force so what are you talking about.
9/26/2019 6:55 PM
I think they may have the new depolyable warhead. Anything deplorable is with LANL.