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HIGH-ENERGY PHYSICS
Management at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (SLAC) routinely disregarded safety regulations in order to keep the scientific results coming. That's the conclusion of a Department of Energy (DOE) investigation into a serious electrical accident this fall at DOE's high-energy physics facility in Menlo Park, California (Science, 29 October, p. 788). The accident has led to the indefinite shutdown of the lab's accelerators, causing SLAC to lose ground to a Japanese laboratory engaged in the same type of research.
Released on 15 December, the DOE accident report blasts SLAC management for fostering a culture in which "unsafe conditions have become a part of the everyday way of doing business." SLAC spokesperson Neil Calder says the lab will take its comeuppance and do what's needed to fix the problems. "The report is the report," says Calder. "We respect that, and now we can use [the report] as a means of going ahead"...