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Experimental particle physicists only form a part of the community of particle physicists. The other part contains theorists. In high-energy physics, the word theorist usually refers to a theoretical physicist whose primary goal is to develop theoretical and mathematical tools that may describe physical phenomena in (far) future, while the desire to understand current experiments and experiments in near future is secondary. Nowadays, most high-energy theorists work in the framework of string theory.
On the other hand, the theoreticians whose primary goal is to develop a description of current experiments and experiments in near future are usually referred to as phenomenologists or, which is almost equivalent, model builders. Although they can be inspired by string theory, their main mathematical formalism is effective field theory. Among the possible physical phenomena that they try to study we find supersymmetry, Higgs mechanism, hierarchy problem, Randall-Sundrum models and other models with extra dimensions, and many others.
This separation into theorists and phenomenologists also affects the preprint archive (www.arxiv.org) as is apparent from the names hep-th (theory), hep-ph (phenomenology), hep-ex (experiments), and hep-lat ( lattice gauge theory).
Throughout the development of particle physics, there have been many objections to the extreme reductionist (or greedy reductionist) approach of attempting to explain everything in terms of elementary particles and their interaction. These objections have been raised by people from an wide array of fields, including many modern particle physicists, solid state physicists, chemists, biologists, and metaphysical holists. While the Standard Model itself is not challenged, it is contended that the properties of elementary particles are no more (or less) fundamental than the emergent properties of atoms and molecules, and especially statistically large ensembles of those. Some critics of reductionism claim that even a complete knowledge of the underlying elementary particles will not lend a thorough understanding of more complicated natural processes, while others doubt that a complete knowledge of particle behavior (as part of a larger process) could even be attained, thanks to quantum indeterminacy.
Reductionists typically claim that all progress in the sciences has involved reductionism to some extent.
Experimental results in particle physics are often obtained using enormous particle accelerators which are very expensive (typically several billion US dollars) and require large amounts of government funding. Because of this, particle physics research involves issues of public policy.
Many have argued that the potential advances do not justify the money spent, and that in fact particle physics takes money away from more important research and education efforts. In 1993, the US Congress stopped the Superconducting Super Collider because of similar concerns, after US$2 billion had already been spent on its construction. Many scientists, both supporters and opponents of the SSC, believe that the decision to stop construction of the SSC was due in part to the end of the Cold War which removed scientific competition with the Soviet Union as a rationale to spend large amounts of money on the SSC.
Some within the scientific community believe that particle physics has also been adversely affected by the aging population. The belief is that the aging population is much more concerned with immediate issues of their health and their parents' health and that this has driven scientific funding away from physics toward the biological and health sciences. In addition, many opponents question the ability of any single country to support the expense of particle physics results and fault the SSC for not seeking greater international funding.
Proponents of particle accelerators hold that the investigation of the most basic theories deserves adequate funding, and that this funding benefits other fields of science in various ways. They point out that all accelerators today are international projects and question the claim that money not spent on accelerators would then necessarily be used for other scientific or educational purposes.
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