Reprinted from UNESCO WORLD SCIENCE REPORT 1996

Megascience
J. THOMAS RATCHFORD AND UMBERTO COLOMBO
Governments, companies and other institutions invest substantial resources in scientific research. In recent decades,
this investment has increased at an exponential rate, Overall investments in research and development (R&D) range
between 2% and 3% of gross domestic product (GDP) for most large, industrialized nations.
In recent years, very large research projects have taken an increasing portion of research budgets, especially
governmental research budgets. This is not surprising. As we learn more about how the universe functions. natures
remaining secrets are increasingly complex, subtle and well hidden. Ever larger and more expensive research
projects are required to unlock at least some of these secrets, This is not only a matter of satisfying human curiosity.
The knowledge so gained may reveal Solutions to some of the most pressing problems affecting humankind in future
generations. Examples include the need to overcome global warming while satisfying growing energy needs, and an
all-out effort to tackle the mounting problem of epidemics such as AIDS that cannot simply be checked by changes
in hygiene or sanitation.
Superimposed against this background is the likelihood that scientists will face starkly reduced funds for the
foreseeable future. The capital-intensive science and technology (S&T) megaprojects are particularly vulnerable. In a
time of scarce resources, they are increasingly judged on their costs, on the number of jobs they might create, on
their contribution to economic competitiveness and on their direct contribution to societal demands - rather than on
their scientific validity. This shifting rationale may mean that, given the time-scale inherent in big science, several
current megaprojects, inherited from the past golden age of science, will come under ever closer scrutiny. Some
policy makers are now prepared to argue that, if this means slowing the pace of scientific progress, so be it. This
gives great scope for the politicization of science and for the role of lobbies - both scientific and other. in parallel. in
many areas of science, national funding constraints are driving increased interest in international cooperation.
An increasing number of ever more expensive, large-scale research projects has caused divisions within the
scientific community in recent years. Supporters of small science have challenged big science budgets, arguing that
economic benefits come more naturally from small science. Further, certain scientific disciplines such as high-energy
physics and astronomy depend much more on large-scale research projects than do others such as condensed- matter
physics, organic chemistry or molecular biology. This has led researchers in some fields of science to claim that big
science projects are funded at their expense.
The question What is big science and what is small science? is not always easy to answer. For example,
megaprojects such as synchrotron light sources are used in support of small science projects carried out by large
numbers of individual investigators. Should such facilities be allocated to the big science or the small science budget
category?
Fundamental to the question of where the funds come from for big science projects is the concept of a science
or research budget. Do governments have a fixed science budget? Would the funding for big science projects go
instead to small science if the big science projects were cancelled?

WHAT IS MEGASCIENCE?
This chapter uses the term megascience to encompass very large, predominantly basic scientific research projects or
programmes. Large technology projects, such as the space station, that are not primarily basic research efforts are not
included. Since some megascience projects (megaprojects) require the development and application of very
expensive and technologically sophisticated apparatus, the distinction is not always easy to draw. For example, one
megaproject of a largely technological nature, the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER), is on
the borderline between technology and science, since scientific evidence for the feasibility of controlled and
sustained thermonuclear fusion has yet to be demonstrated. ITER links the worlds four major thermonuclear
research efforts - the USA and Canada. the European Union, Japan and Russia.
Megascience in this chapter does not refer necessarily to large, integrated laboratories such as Brookhaven National
Laboratory or one of the Max-Planck Institutes. The scale of research in these laboratories is certainly equal to that

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Is there a science budget?

Many scientists firmly believe in a science budget, and that all research projects compete with each other for a portion of that
budget. These same scientists fear that new megaprojects will take funds from other areas of science in what is essentially a zero
sum game.
It is more likely that each megaproject is justified separately, with different sources of political support. Funds for
megaprojects in the past have mostly not come from existing R&D budgets, but have been add-ons. When megaprojects have been
cancelled before completion, such as in 1994 with the Superconducting Super Collider (SSC) in the USA, the unspent funds were
lost to research.
Hubert Curien, President of the CERN Council and former Minister of Science in France, summed up this point of view at
a 1994 conference on large facilities in physics. He said: Some scientists naturally think that with the same money one could do
many other things. The problem is that one will never have the same money; if money is not spent in one field in science, there is no
hope of transferring it to another.
The important question is whether the future will be like the past. The answer is not clear, since governments face budget
pressures unlike any faced for at least two generations. International cooperation in megascience may, in fact. be seen as a way of
rationing funds for big science projects in a period of austerity.

of many, megaprojects, however, they lack the coherence and single-minded objectives of true megaprojects.

We shall refer to two fundamentally different types of megaprojects:

the central facility megaproject, such as the space telescope and the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility;
the distributed facility megaproject, such as the various interconnected Global Change Research Programmes
coordinated by the international Group of Funding Agencies for Global Change Research (IGFA), and the
Human Genome Project.

Central facility megaprojects

Central facility megaprojects are easy to understand. They can be identified by geographical location and represent a
substantial capital investment. Space-based facilities have obvious differences regarding location, but the principle is
the same.
These central facility megaprojects may be devoted to a particular experiment or family of experiments in a
narrow discipline, as one finds with a particle accelerator. Conversely, central facility megaprojects may consist of
special apparatus such as synchrotron light sources and/or neutron sources used widely by researchers in traditional
small science fields such as condensed-matter physics and in other disciplines such as chemistry and the medical
sciences.

Distributed facility megaprojects

As the name implies, distributed facility megaprojects are not associated with a particular geographical location.
Scientists in many institutions and places participate, and funding often comes from a variety of sources. There may
be researchers from many fields of science, as one finds in the various Global Change Research Programmes.
How is a distributed facility megaproject distinguished from the collection of research in a field or sub-field of
science? First, there is a focus for the research, with some scientific or social objective. Examples are characterizing
the human genome or the measurement and understanding of global climate change. Further, there is usually one or
more coordinating group for the research. These coordinating groups can be governmental or not and can
encompass both scientific and funding issues. Many, if not most, of the distributed megaprojects also have a need for
some centralized data management capability. so the results of the diverse experiments are efficiently collected.

Data
Data are the glue that holds distributed megaprojects together, and an ever-increasing component of such efforts, sometimes
measured in terabytes. Effective data collection, management, evaluation and distribution are crucial to the success of such
megaprojects. Challenges for the future include standardization and quality control for the data collected and processed, and
assurance of access for qualified researchers worldwide.

archived and made available to the scientific and policy communities worldwide.

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It is not always easy to categorize megaprojects as being either of the central or distributed facility type.
Oceanography is usually considered in the latter category although drilling ships are now beginning to look more like
megascience facilities as costs escalate for succeeding generations of vessels. And even particle accelerators, perhaps
the purest of central facility megaprojects, have a substantial portion of their costs carried by a diverse and often
international cadre of users, who actually do the experiments and furnish much of their experimental apparatus.

THE GROWTH OF MEGASCIENCE

Megascience is not entirely a modem phenomenon. In the 16th century, Tycho Brahes great astronomical
observatory, funded by the Danish monarchy, was a scientific megaproject of its day. The investment certainly paid
off, though not necessarily for the Danish monarchy. The work of Brahe's assistant, Johannes Kepler, underpinned
the development of the Newtonian worldview which was to dominate science for over 300 years.
In the USA, perhaps the most successful early megascience project was the Lewis and Clark expedition in the
early 19th century. Over 100 years later, Ernest Lawrence conceived of a machine that would split atoms and probe
the nucleus. Lawrence's cyclotron was, for its time, also an effective consumer of capital and operating funds.
It was the Second World War that not only altered the relationship between government and science, but also
provided the resources for a true megaproject. Although one may quibble over whether it was a science project or a
technology project, the Manhattan Project certainly did push back the frontiers of basic science. And its magnitude
was unprecedented: a cost of US$2 billion, compared to total US federal expenditure in 1940 for all R&D of about
US$70 million.

Measuring megascience
There are no commonly accepted accounting rules for measuring the costs of megaprojects or, for that matter, of
identifying a minimum level of funding required to earn the label 'megaproject'. There are a number of
considerations, such as absolute cost, cost relative to total government funding of all civil R&D or of the total budget
of the scientific discipline in which the megaproject is found. The unusually high cost of megaprojects constitutes an
insurmountable barrier for smaller countries to undertake on a national basis. But, increasingly, even the larger
nations are finding it difficult to take on megaprojects without international cooperation (see section entitled
Internationalizing megascience).
Many believe that funding for megaprojects has been increasing faster than for research overall. Studies of the
funding of megaprojects in the USA by the Congressional Budget Office and the General
Accounting Office in 1992, for example, concluded that megaprojects were squeezing research dollars for other
areas of research. This conclusion, however, assumes the research budget is fixed, with the ability to transfer funds
from one project or field of science to another. This is probably not the Case (see box).
How much of the total research budget goes to megaprojects? An analysis Of the US research budget by the
Congressional Research Service (CRS) shows megaprojects consuming about 10% of the total federal R&D budget
for the fiscal. years 1991-95. Although the definitions of megaprojects are somewhat different from those used by the
authors of this chapter, the comparison is useful in estimating the impact of megaprojects on research budgets. If one
examines the seven civilian megaprojects identified by CRS, and compares their budgets to the total federal basic
research budget, the proportion is of the order of 15 % A reasonable estimate therefore is that megaprojects consume
between 10% and 20% of the US federal research budget.

WHY GOVERNMENTS SUPPORT MEGAPROJECTS

Governments support megaprojects for a variety of reasons In the distant past the whims of emperors and kings were
important- Mercantilist economies drove geographical exploration and scientific expeditions. In more recent years,
national security considerations have been paramount, at least up to the end of the Cold War. Scientific fashions,
however, are still very much with us today. Fashion may no longer work its effect on the climate of opinion in
Versailles or Vienna. but it still helps explain the rush to fund certain areas which happen to he championed by the
media. The power of lobbyists in pressing for the funding of certain causes can sometimes outweigh any rational
scientific justification for the high priority assigned. Similarly, changes in fashion can suddenly alter previously
accepted notions of utility of megaprojects, leading to a contraction of their budgets, as has occurred with space

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research
Today, arguments for supporting megaprojects usually originate in the sub-discipline involved. and are based
on scientific considerations. National prestige, political and economic reasons are often invoked to buttress the
scientific rationale. Economic arguments range from the short term (direct expenditures) to the long range
(strengthening education, high-technology industries and international economic competitiveness).
Megascience clearly augments the worlds storehouse of knowledge, and provides associated intellectual,
educational and broad economic benefits. Academic studies indicate that the likely social rate of return from research
such as this is high. But the long-term benefits are likely to be global, not local or national, as we saw with Brahes
observatory. Private, or even national long-range benefits are harder to identify and, when they are identified, more
often than not turn out to be indirect benefits such as those related to education.

Role of scientists
As one would expect, the most likely supporters of a megaproject are the scientists working in the affected field of
research. Proposals for new megaprojects originate with the scientists, usually formal or informal groups outside
governments. They address the most exciting scientific challenges in the particular field. In some cases they emerge
from efforts to prioritize fields of research sponsored by prestigious scientific organizations. Some of these groups
are international. and various national initiatives may be included in the proposals. Some proposals originate in
international institutions that would be responsible for the megaproject.
There is no rigid formula for obtaining support for a potential megaproject. The most common path is for the
interested group of scientists to present its ideas to the national research agency that is the major source of funding
for the affected field of research. There may be initial funding provided for a feasibility study.
Crucial to a decision to go forward are cost estimates and selection of the site and/or contractor, The decision is
made by the agency, and in the case Of truly large megaprojects (budgets constituting a significant portion of the
agencys total R&D budget for the scientific field containing the megaproject), approved at higher levels Of
government. Low estimates of construction Costs are not uncommon. This approach is sometimes referred to as the
camels nose under the tent strategy The excessive, and sometimes partisan, optimism of supporters may carry initial
approval of a particular megaproject. But an accumulation of cost overruns and construction delays soon becomes a
boomerang which, in turn, casts doubt on the credibility of future projects, even in other areas of science. This
problem is compounded by the fact that megaprojects, once budgeted, are difficult to stop. Any such decision is
taken with much anguish and pain.
Scientists, in recent years have moved beyond the walls of the scientific community and the affected research
agencies in supporting specific megaprojects. In the USA. lobbying of Congress and mounting aggressive public
relations efforts are not unknown. Elsewhere, the situation is not much better. In Japan, and in Europe, lobbies
supporting particular high budget megaprojects may prevail over the concerned opinion of decision makers, as well
as the majority of scientists active in the field.

Changing national attitudes

Megaprojects have traditionally been national Initiatives. Information on planned megaprojects has been widely
available, and the total cost of megaprojects has been shared as different nations or groups of nations funded their
own initiatives. The rules of access by scientists to the facilities have in general been merit-based, with users only
paying the costs of their experiments. Little geographic discrimination has been in evidence.
This situation is changing. The fundamental reasons for change are several. They include the twin realities of
escalating megaproject costs and static or declining governmental R&D budgets. Public attitudes towards science
and research in general are less supportive. There is growing recognition of the difficulties sponsoring nations have
in capturing the long-term benefits of megaprojects. And the end Of the Cold War has altered the International R&D
equation, reducing the effectiveness of security-based arguments in support of national scientific preeminence. At the
same time the climate is more favourable to open access, especially when the facility is not used at full capacity.
Finally, economic pragmatism has undermined the effectiveness of the national prestige argument.

INTERNATIONALIZING MEGASCIENCE
For centuries, science and research have been perhaps the most international of all human activities. It is common for
scientists in universities and other research institutions to have much closer collaboration with colleagues half way

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around the world than with those half way down the hall.
This ease of collaboration irrespective of geography has become much easier and less expensive in recent
years, especially since the Second World War, because of developments in technology. Communications are
instantaneous and almost free. Travel is fast and less expensive, and red tape is not nearly as complicated as it once
was. One could argue that the environment for internationalizing research is in place. and that the invisible hand of
the market optimizes cooperative research activities.

Current trends and political climate

There is evidence of increased cooperation in research across national boundaries, in both big and small science.
There have been increases in the number of bilateral science and technology agreements between nations. Shared
authorship of journal articles by scientists of different countries is growing, Many specialized agencies have arisen
to Facilitate international cooperation in research, several of them in the United Nations system, in particular. the
role of UNESCO in developing, scientific cooperation worldwide has been highly meritorious. And cooperative
agreements between universities and scientific and engineering societies in different countries arc increasing.
Although hard budget figures are difficult to come by, most observers believe that cooperation in megascience
is increasing faster than is the case for research overall. Europe is clearly in the lead, compared With North America
and Japan. Cooperation in science in Europe was already favored by the number of relatively small players, and the
progressive efforts being made to achieve economic and then political union with the foundation of the European
Community. A number of intergovernmental organizations, such as the European Centre For Nuclear Research
(CERN), the European Southern Observatory (ESO) and the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility (ESRF), now
play major roles in European and global - megascience.
If we exclude the decisive contribution of scientists from overseas to the Manhattan Project, the USA, like
Japan and Russia, has come to international cooperation in megascience more recently. In part this was due to the
scale of US research budgets and the megaprojects they funded. The USA and the then Soviet Union, fuelled by
imperatives of the Cold War, unilaterally initiated many megascience projects with the explicit objective of
outdistancing the other. Japan, with relatively tow government funding for research and a tradition of emphasis on
economically relevant research, has only recently entered the megascience arena.
The end of the Cold War has also seen changes in the political climate for megascience. This has been most
pronounced in the USA, where competition with the former Soviet Union was a powerful argument for the funding
of national cutting-edge megaprojects. Now it is coming to be appreciated in Congress and the White House that
many megaprojects are too expensive for US research budgets, and that the only alternative is shared funding.
Ironically, the statement of this principle by the US government (but not necessarily its execution) was most
forthright With respect to the SSC. Europe and Japan, unlike the USA, have had fewer problems in the past with the
principle of shared funding of megaprojects. One difficulty likely to hamper further internationalization is the
complexity of the US budgetary process, which makes it difficult to) guarantee a commitment in long-term funding
to joint efforts. The reputation of the USA as an unreliable partner will continue to complicate international
discussions related to cooperation in megascience.
The politics among the scientific communities of the world are, if anything, more complex than in the broader
society. Experts in sub-fields of research who propose megaprojects generally want them as national projects. This is
because the roles for themselves as national disciplinary leaders are likely to be more prominent. in the aspiration for
Nobel Prizes, national megaprojects are an asset for the host nations scientists.

Advantages and disadvantages

There are, not surprisingly, both advantages and disadvantages to internationalizing megaprojects There may be
greater stability in funding and economics of scale if limited resources from national programmes arc combined in an
international megaproject. A global intellectual pool should be stronger than competing national ones. And in the
post-Cold War world, political arguments for pooling resources to increase the storehouse of knowledge for all
humankind is an attractive one. Furthermore, wide internationalization of megaprojects would allow them to profit
from the scientific talent available in smaller Countries and in developing countries. broadening also the context
within which decisions are taken. An added advantage of this wider scientific cooperation is represented by the
process of knowledge transfer and training-in-research that is implicit in such activity.

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ITER
The original idea of jointly designing and building the first thermonuclear reactor was put forward in several summit meetings,
starting with the Mitterrand/Gorbachev meeting in Paris in 1985.
,he ongoing quadripartite (European Union, Japan, Russia and the USA) cooperation on an International Thermonuclear
Experimental Reactor (ITER), undertaken under he auspices of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), is a unique
example of world collaboration in big science. Its aim is to produce by July 19 98 the detailed engineering design of the reactor,
and to snare the supporting R&D jointly. Switzerland is fully -associated with the European Union. Canada is involved in the US
contribution and Kazakhstan with the Russian.
The overall programme objective of ITER is to demonstrate the scientific and technological feasibility of fusion energy for peaceful
purposes. The ITER engineering design activities are expected to cost about US$1.2 billion (shared equally), to last six years and
to provide a sound basis for the decision on ITER construction. The design proper is being undertaken by a joint team of over 200
professionals and four home teams. Joint team centres are located in Japan, the USA and Germany. Supporting R&D tasks are
shared equally between the four parties.
A new agreement will be necessary for the construction phase. The site selection will be particularly challenging. Construction could
start in 1998, would take about eight years and cost about US$6.5 billion. ITER would operate for about 20 years.

Inter-nationalizing megaprojects has disadvantages as well. First, if a specific megaproject is internationally

managed, there are likely to be complex governance and administrative structures that have less efficiency than
national structures. International bureaucracies are particularly expensive and difficult to manage efficiently.
Although needless competition may be bad, competition can also encourage innovation and efficiency.
The generally successful efforts to internationalize megaprojects in Europe have brought with them certain
inefficiencies, largely associated with siting, contracting and other allocations of the economic benefits between the
supporting nations. In this, however, they are not alone, as recent US experience shows. In terms of successful
internationalization in Europe, such as CERN for example, the add-on overhead is generally more than compensated
for by the added value accruing from the pooling of resources and broader representation of the team.
Internationalizing megaprojects need not imply that each individual megaproject be run as an international
activity. Another approach is to divide responsibility for construction and management of individual megaprojects
between nations, according to some fair and-agreed-upon formula, with reciprocal rights Of access. Some elements
of this approach have been used in the past, but more recently emphasis has been given to the quid pro quo involved.
Currently, governments and research managers in agencies that support research see another advantage in
internationalizing megascience: international agreements for the support of a specific research initiative can be useful
as a budget control device. This approach is to set the level of effort for a particular megaproject or family of
megaprojects politically, and to leave to the scientists the task of deciding In the specific allocation of the funds.
CERN is a good example of this approach by the Europeans.

THE FUTURE
Although the past is always helpful in providing insights into the future, in the case of internationalizing
megaprojects it is likely that the future will be very different from the situation since the 1960s. While financial
constraints are the major driving force favouring international cooperation, they arc not the only motive.

Global problems
In todays world we are facing a host or global problems which truly can only be solved through concerted efforts to
find global solution, Clear examples come from the environmental sciences First and foremost are studies into
climate change and the depletion of the ozone layer in the upper atmosphere. but there are also joint programmes in
deep drilling and oceanography. Megaprojects are underway to address some of these concerns. In the key area of
world nutrition, however, much remains to he done.
Agricultural productivity growth in South and South-East Asia has begun to peak. With rapid population
growth the need for food often submerges the call for environmental sustainability. Past scientific successes,
principally the Green Revolution of the 1960s and 1970s, are showing their, limits. There is clearly a need for more
sustainable approaches which must still be developed. We have to prepare for a world with 10-12 billion human
beings, of whom
fewer than 2 billion will be in the rich North. Megascience could offer a hope of avoiding catastrophe. Concerted
international cooperation in targeted (distributed) megaprojects uniting the latest scientific advances, specifically in
the nascent field of agro-biotechnologies, pooling resources and especially sharing risks, tasks and information and
data, could bring solutions much closer.

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OECD Megascience Forum

The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) Council established the OECD Megascience Forum on 1
June 1992 for a three-year period- Its concept and proposal was the major accomplishment of the March 1992 OECD science
ministerial meeting, The Forum is an activity of the OECD Committee for Scientific and Technological Policy (CSTP).
Its function is to provide a mechanism for the development and exchange of information and studies on science
megaprojects. Under its auspices a number of meetings of experts have been convened to assess the state of research and
international cooperation in various megascience WI including deep drilling, global change, particle physics and neutron beams and
synchrotron radiation sources. Several reports have been published.
The Forum was never designed to be a decision making body. However, the September 1995 OECD science ministerial meeting
endorsed a proposal to extend it for another three years under a revised mandate. The Forum, composed of policy-level
government officials, will continue to consider generic policy issues. Additionally, it is now empowered to create working groups of
government officials and non-government scientists in specific disciplinary areas that should, at a minimum, provide closer
coordination of the actions of national funding agencies in the prescribed areas. It is possible that this second round of OECD
involvement in the megascience issue will lead to international agreement on a more robust and permanent framework of
cooperation, such as those discussed in the section entitled The future.

This is an area in which the commitment of individual scientists will be as important as that of governments
and international organizations. Through the agencies of e-mail and the Internet, for example, team building comes
about through the electronic notice board, not through negotiation. This practice is surely destined to spread and to
affect big science. It may be that future megaprojects for solving global problems will first be conceived in this way.

New boundary conditions

The boundary conditions shaping the future are likely to be several , including:
increased opportunities for scientific progress through megaprojects;
severe constraints on national R&D budgets;
intense competition for R&D funds, within fields and between fields of research;
erosion of public support for basic research;
ill strong pressures to ration funds For megascience;
a more aggressive role for government R&D officials.
There are already international organizations interested in coordinating and managing megascience. These
include the United Nations (in particular, within the system, UNESCO, which, as we have seen, played a pivotal role
in the creation of CERN and is responsible for several global research programmes), the OECD (see box) and the
European Union-, the G-7 has dabbled around the edges. Currently, the European Commission is a major provider of
funding. Other regional bodies may also intervene. The various United Nations agencies have some experience in
management of particular research areas, but little in the field of megascience. It is unclear whether these agencies
working together, or another created ad hoc, would be able to ensure the long-term commitment of resources that is
required. But the nature Of the global problems which need to be tackled in an international effort could justify a
special initiative on their part. On the other hand, OECD, whose current structure fits ill with the needs of research
policy management, may be a possible basis on which to build a clearing-house function, coordinating funding from
the worlds richer countries in a shared effort to benefit all mankind. From being inevitably categorized as Utopian
only a few years ago, this concept is now one to which thought is being given by all who value the contribution that
global science projects can make to the future of the world.

Policy options
What might the future for megascience look like? What innovations in decision making, organization, funding arid
administration will evolve? The answers are riot easy to ascertain, but the three different scenarios outlined below
may provide some insights.

Status quo
The future may took somewhat like the recent past, with strong competition between and among national scientific

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groups, further politicization of the funding process and erratic decision making at the national level. Given the
boundary conditions noted above, this scenario does not augur well for the health of world science.

Increased project-by-project cooperation

The informal nature of cooperation in megaprojects would continue, with increased pressure from governments.
enhanced information exchange capability and more widely, available negotiating, fora. One outcome might be the
development of a pro forma megascience budget, with division of megaprojects between nations on an equitable
basis. Problems include defining the roles of small nations and the lack of credible budget discipline for the
individual countries.

Treaty or other durable agreement

Megascience projects, or at least the central facility ones, would be funded under an agreement between .the nations
With the largest economics. There Would be a trade-off as far as the interested components Of the scientific
community are concerned, between stable funding on the one hand and a de facto rationing of resources on the other.
Such an umbrella agreement or package deal would be difficult to fashion. It would have to provide for the fair
sharing of the benefits of megaprojects, both the scientific and direct economic benefits, It could incorporate the
principle of a market basket of megaprojects, some of which Would be national projects for which the funding
nation would receive credit. The largest might be truly international, with joint funding and management.

Challenge to scientists and governments

The challenge to governments and scientists is to craft a resilient, credible, international framework for the support
of megascience in the future. It must reflect current, universal budget stringencies, yet be attuned both to the real
problems of the global society and to the most exciting, unsolved scientific challenges. Scientific excellence must be
guarded. Equity among nations should apply both to costs and benefits. The challenge is great, but the reward is
worth the effort.

REFERENCES AND FURTHER READING

Blanpied, W., Bond, J.S. and Irvine, J. (eds) (1992) Megascience projects an emerging issue for the 21 st
century, in Equipping Science for the 2 1 st Century, London: Elgar Press.
OECD (1993) Megascience: the OECD Forum, Megascience and its Background. Paris: Organization for
Economic Cooperation and Development.
- (1995) What is the OECD Megascience Forum? Paris: Organization for Economic Cooperation and
Development.
Presidents Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (1992) Megaprojects in the Sciences,
Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office.
US Congress, Office of Technology Assessment (1995) International Partnerships in Large Science
Projects, Washington, DC. US Government Printing Office.

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