LONDON—An international review of the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) in Geneva has dealt a double blow to the laboratory's administration. Severely critical of CERN's management, accounting and personnel policies, it nevertheless has not identified cash savings that would persuade Britain to remain a member of Europe's premier high-energy physics center.
The review panel, set up at Britain's instigation, presented its interim findings to CERN's council in early June. Its most urgent recommendation is to freeze long-term appointments and shrink the 3,500-member staff by 500 in the next two years. Unless CERN takes this step, the group's unpublished interim report said, "it is doomed to paralysis of an all-too-familiar kind" by a static and aging workforce.
But paying off departing staff members would cost extra money in the short term, and Britain's motive in demanding the review was to find budget savings. An earlier British review of the nation's...
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