Sancho v. U.S. Dept. of Energy

The premise of the recent movie adaption of I Am Legend is the creation by well-meaning scientists of a cure for cancer, which, following the iron law of unintended consequences, quickly mutates into a lethal strain and kills, well, everyone. Catastrophe via hubris on the part of scientists is a staple of sci-fi, which is why if you ever hear the news that the common cold has been cured, you will find anyone who's ever watched any sci-fi running for the hills: the transformation of something common, virulent, and benign into something common, virulent, and lethal is an extremely obvious ironic twist ending to the human story.

Much the same problem underpins a federal lawsuit filed by two scientists in Hawaii, who are worried that CERN's Large Hadron Collider, which was designed to study high-energy particle collisions, might have the unintended consequence of catastrophe via hubris on the part of scientists. Per the NYT, Walter Wagner and Luis Sancho "contend that scientists at ... CERN[ ] have played down the chances that the collider could produce, among other horrors, a tiny black hole, which, they say, could eat the Earth ... [or] a 'strangelet' that would convert our planet to a shrunken dense dead lump of something called 'strange matter.' Their suit also says CERN has failed to provide an environmental impact statement as required under the National Environmental Policy Act."

I know what you're all wondering, because I had the same thought: what's the personal jurisdiction of a Federal District Court in Hawaii over a research laboratory in Switzerland?

The case is Sancho v. U.S. Dept. of Energy et al, and both the case name and the complaint hint at the answer to the question. They contend that the Department of Energy is one of several "partners[ ]" who are constructing the LHA, and DoE has failed to meet various impact assesment requirements of NEPA. They request that the court restrain the operation of the LHA at least until DoE has conducted what they charge is the required public consultation, and preferably "until such time that the LHC can be proven to be reasonably safe within industry standards" (which is to say, presumably, "forever," since a device with a non-zero chance of wiping out the planet is unlikely to ever be within rational "industry standards"). Making DoE the defendant would seem to suffice for personal jurisdiction, although it does raise another jurisdictional hurdle, viz. whether Wagner & Sancho have standing. The redressability prong (to the extent anything's left of it after Mass. v. EPA) is going to be the tricky part, since it'll turn on how much operational control (or at least, pull) DoE has at CERN.

I shall be accused of being a luddite, but jurisdictional questions aside, I'm in favor of adult supervision of scientific pet projects that could obliterate all life on Earth. Cost and scale aside, LHA is your wide-eyed pre-teen wondering what happens if he lights a whole box of matches on fire. Is it cool? Of course it's cool. That's not the point. Jack Dee used to say that building construction is an incredibly important and intricate business, which is why it shouldn't be left to builders. Ditto most science. As I'd expect Tully would agree from his various postings on the IPCC, there are few groups more inclined to institutional arrogance than scientists, which makes it somewhat less than reassuring to be told that the chances that this machine will destroy the world are minimal. I have no idea if LHA is dangerous; the scientists running it say not very; the plaintiffs (no dummies themselves) say somewhat. Who's right? How much are we betting on it?

In the opening of I Am Legend, Emma Thompson's character Dr. Krippin - full of puffed up pride ill-disguised as giddy modesty - analogizes her team's solution to cancer to the effect of, what if you took a really fast car, that bad guys use to commit crimes, soup it up even more, and give it to the cops? The possibility that the bad guys might steal the souped up cop car apparently did not occur to Krippin. But why would it? Her project - like LHA - was just so cool. Perhaps before LHA is turned on, we should take out an insurance policy: a quick jaunt back to the moon to amend Apollo 11's message: "We came in peace for all mankind But we meant well."

HT: Althouse.