You Be The Judge

About three days ago Brian Williams had a puff piece on his evening news about the CERN, Large Hadron Collider (LHC). Without divulging any useful or interesting information He remarked on the wingnuts that opined the Earth, and maybe the whole universe, would be eaten up by a man made black hole. He closed with the instruction to the viewing audience - "You be the judge." This kind of reporting promotes the continuing ignorance of the American viewing public about science. For god's sake how could any individual of the American viewing public have an informed opinion on the operation of the LHC? Even physicists (and I are one) are in general not educated and informed on the intricacies of particle theory. The LHC is the product of decades of effort by more than 10,000 PhDs. To make matters worse the report failed to note that the lighting off of this machine that night would not include any energetic collisions. That would not come until late next fall. For some of the average viewing public the report may have caused some real anxiety. In India a young girl actually committed suicide fearing that the end of the world was near.