I don't think it's productive to label as "anti-science" anyone who asks sincere questions about whether LHC (or any project) is worth the price-tag.
I don't think it's productive to label as "anti-science" anyone who asks sincere questions about whether LHC (or any project) is worth the price-tag.
Asking questions is great, the anti-science rhetoric is the kind that suggests that research isn't worth the cost if the objective knowledge is not obviously or immediately applicable outside the lab. Science works in discrete steps.
you can't automatically say that any scientific research is worth spending billions of dollars of money on.
Not all researchers are created equal, so I can't automatically say it, but I'd be hard pressed to name a field of cutting edge research that I think doesn't deserve to be well funded. The reality is, science is pretty damn cheap for what it yields (e.g. the modern world). You can't really put a price on universal truth.
Let alone the fact that when they pursue a goal to find out for example about a magical Higgs particle, there will be innovations in other side-fields of that particulair research (e.g. computing power, more advanced sensory array's etc). And these technologies can then perhaps be applied in fields that people can actually relate to in their own environment: Making a planetrip more safer by enabling sensors to be less error-prone for example.
where on earth would it all end?