The LHC and the Bizarre Behaviour of the BBC

Private Eye have given us further insight into the way that the BBC "managed" their coverage of the Large Hadron Collider. It seems that the state of Auntie's science reporting is even worse than the pessimists among us imagined, with CERN employees left bemused by the bizarre requests of BBC representatives.

...the BBC has been hyping an "extraordinary event" that it created and dubbed "Big Bang Day", on 10 September.

The papers were happy to run with this idea, and so the meme spread that a big, dangerous experiment was being started on "Big Bang Day". But of course, this wasn't actually true.

Scientists at the Large Hadron Collider tried to point out that starting up the machine was a process of commissioning and "not as simple as flipping a switch" and that the process was a lengthy one that had been going on since January, but the 10th was a convenient peg, because the LHC's major milestone ... was harder to predict.

On September 10th, a beam would, it was hoped, travel around the LHC's circuit for the first time. Scientifically not that interesting, but it suited the media diary, and so began to creation of the media myth that was "Big Bang Day". The fact that no experimentation would be taking place on that day didn't stop virtually every organ of the mainstream press proclaiming that this would be the day that black holes would be made and the world ended. When the day arrived it was, of course, a complete anti-climax.

Even the beam, which was supposed to whizz around for the first time at 8.30am, was actually slowly nursed around the LHC in uneventful stages. It was such a non-event that Andrew Marr, reporting live for Radio 4's Today Programme and with "exclusive" access to the LHC control room , seemed uncertain when the "historic moment for world science" actually happened. "Oh, it's... it's happened," he said at one point. But it hadn't.

The BBC then went nuts over this story, and probably played a significant part in creating the media hype over Doomsday that accompanied the launch of the LHC, but it's only since Big Bang Day that it has become apparent just how out of control the BBC were, with a variety of stories emerging from LHC staff.

It started to fall apart when a request for a big red button to push to start the machine were rebuffed by scientists. Nonetheless, the proposal was so amusing that before the event LHC staff referred to the 10th with great amusement as "Red Button Day". Reports that the BBC also asked LHC bosses to launch the experiment to coincide with the 8.30am slot on Today appear to be true.

Some people wonder why a lot of scientists are reluctant to climb into bed with the media, and to those people I am tempted to respond by vigorously thrusting my index figures, outstretched arms and straining upper body in the direction of these moronic "journalists", while jumping up and down and shouting, "DO YOU SEE?"

If I walked into a job interview without doing basic research about the company beforehand, I would expect to be shown the door. If I approached a charity or government body for funding without having the most basic idea of what they were doing, I would expect to be told not to waste their time. What the hell are CERN supposed to do if a BBC representative comes knocking on their door asking to work with them, when it's clear that they have not bothered to gain even the most basic understanding of what CERN are doing?

In fact, there's a real dissonance that infects this whole set-up. We're led to believe that the BBC were so enamoured with the project that they decided to turn it into a day-long media event, and yet they didn't even know what the project was? I can't even begin to make sense of that situation. How does that work?

Anyway, enough ranting, I'll leave you with an xkcd-ism on the issue.