The conclusion of this study is not clear at all to me. From reading their executive summary, the CEBR researchers seem to take the global value added (GVA) of any physics-based industry, and consider it as a something like a contribution of physics to the society.
That sounds like a gross overestimation to me.<p>As an example, they consider "Extraction of crude petroleum" as a physics-based industry. Naively I would consider that industry at least 33% physics, 33% chemistry, and 33% engineering. Aren't they largely overestimating their conclusion by neglecting chemistry and egineering?<p>Disclaimer: I am a former physicist. I really think that science funding is vital to Europe, that this kind of studies should help supporting the field...
I would just like to better understand how the EPS and CEBR got to such a clickbait title. I have the impression that this kind of article could actually undermine the credibility of all the contributions that Physics research is actually bringing to society at large.
The kind of sophistry nonsense that passes as a scientific study these days is amazing.<p>Agriculture is worth much more than physics, since it feeds physicists all by itself. You could come up with many such dependencies to create chains of "worth more" relations, all utterly pointless. If the idea was to get more funding for physicists, it's unconvincing.
I'm hopefully a future physicist and the first to defend its importance but this kind of argument seems quite bad faith to me.<p>"<i>Physics-based industries are those that rely heavily on expertise in physics. These include oil and gas extraction, nuclear fuel processing, and various forms of manufacturing like fibre optics, lighting equipment, office machinery, cars, ships and armaments.</i>"<p>Oil extraction, gas, and ships. Really? Sure, I get it, these areas wouldn't be possible without prior physics research, and present physicists will create new economic opportunities in the future; but blindly inhereting these fields' economic signifiance to physics seems incorrect. In other news, mathematics worth more than 80% of EU economy - these industries include finance, business, engineering, computing, and entertainment.
The idea that the (whole economy) = (physics + retail + financials + other stuff) seems like somebody made a type error. You can't just add a research field to industries. I guess you could draw out 2 separate pies: 1 of GDP by industry and 1 by "field" but you're still comparing apples to oranges.
So they spent an absolute fortune on things which might be cool but really contributed nothing to the economy except construction and employment. And the argument is that because they wasted such a huge amount on these vapid endeavors, an incredible proportion of the entire economy, that therefore they should continue because it is "contributing" to the economy by virtue of its <i>spending</i>.<p>Give Universal Basic Income to everyone. That will spend more and then we can say with the same reasoning that UBI is worth more to the economy than retail and financial services.
“All businesses require movement and the existence of stuff to make a profit and thus depend on physics. Please please please fund our new particle accelerator”
"Physics-based industries, it says, include electrical, civil and mechanical engineering, as well as computing and other industries reliant on physics research."<p>This model feels overly broad. For instance I'd agree developing a new process for microprocessor production is physics centric, but writing sofware is not and both are part of 'computing'.
I don’t dispute the significance of physics to industry and economics, but basic physics innovation would not be commercialized without the participation of a host of non-physicists.
As a physics graduate I would have considered this self evident. Of course we pretty much single handedly run the economy. Along with our sidekicks [0] in the other hard sciences we invented it.<p>[0] <a href="https://www.xkcd.com/435" rel="nofollow">https://www.xkcd.com/435</a><p></s>
Scientist discovers that he is very important and valuable. Much more valuable than all those idiots who didn't go to university...or those people who did go to university but earn more than scientist despite being way way more stupid then scientist.