Researchers are contesting a one-man campaign to shutter Germany's flagship particle physics facility. In an article last month in the magazine Der Spiegel, physicist Hans Grassmann charged that the Deutsche Elektronen Synchrotron (DESY) in Hamburg conducts "irrelevant physics" and advocated making better use of its $140 million annual budget. In response, DESY's directors, led by physicist Albrecht Wagner, posted a four-page rebuttal on the lab's Web site, along with more than 50 endorsements from physicists around the world. In one, Fermilab director Michael Witherell calls DESY "one of the world's most important physics laboratories."
But Grassmann, a German who recently joined Italy's University of Udine, contends that DESY's scientific output has been poor. And he denies that his attack was motivated by his failure to win a job at DESY, where he worked briefly as a student. But Grassmann has found few allies so far. Because German scientists fear reprisals, he says, it is "almost impossible" to find physicists "who would make such criticisms in public."
