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 Unless CERN takes this step, the group's unpublished interim report said, "it is doomed to paralysis of an all-too-familiar kind" by a static and aging workforce.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 contribution to particle physics recommended that the country spend no more than £30 million ($48 million) at CERN each year. That figure was repeated in this year's spending advice to the government from the Advisory Board for the Research Councils (ABRC). The board then said further action should be delayed pending the ...
