Obviously, I don't know what baxtr meant, but I really hope it's not that. Because this critique of projects like ITER and CERN is really misguided IMO (and honestly just harmful). These are not startups, these are pure science projects, they are pretty much supposed to have negative ROI. It's not even fair to call giving them money an investment, these are grants and donations. Money that you sacrifice to a worthy cause, that supposedly would be the only cause in the fantasy world of communism-utopia, but that absolutely cannot get an investment in the world of pragmatic capitalism, because it is not about making money.
Hmm, perhaps my comment was not clear enough. I am all for large scale science and have nothing negative to say on the subject. I just do not consider that type of project to have serious "risk." Barring extreme cases, a bunch of researchers doing research is not going to produce any career-ending disasters.
