[kjrfghslkdjfl]

I'm quite confident in guessing that you've never had any first hand contact with experimental physics research.

If you did, you'd know that most people aren't there for "the income", but because they enjoy advancing physics.

Yes, sure, if there's a non-discovery, physicists will move on to the next best thing which is "... can we still learn something new about how the universe works?" They won't "just make some shit up".

Counter-point: non-discoveries do happen all the time, and we can look how they turned out. Nuclear fusion has been failing for decades, and scientists "making shit up" is extremely rare. In 40 years one team tried making shit up (cold fusion) and got wrecked by the scientific community.

[BurnGpuBurn]

You're quite wrong in your guess but that's ok. I work in a research lab actually, and there's lots of experimental physics going on here.

I never claimed people are choosing a career in physics research for the money, I just used the argument of having to choose to lose ones income. Also, I can't help but notice though that, when ascended high enough on the academic ladder, the income isn't a joke either.

[SirHumphrey]

Do you know what severely hurts your income as a scientist? Lying about the data and then other people finding out. With the amount of data both of LHC detectors were publishing covering up the lie would be impossible- it’s exceedingly difficult to fabricate data convincingly (see Jan Hendrik Schön).

I would be much more worried about errors in methodology than falsifications.

[sanderjd]

The income is a total joke compared to what those people would be able to make on any private sector job ladder. Anyone who can be a tenured research physicist could easily make seven figures (likely more) in finance.

[poincaredisk]

>easily make seven figures (likely more)

I agree that income is a joke but... more than seven figures as in eight? That's quite a lot.

[sanderjd]

Yeah I guess this might be hyperbolic. But my sense is that quite a few quants make seven figures, and that people capable of being tenured research physicists could be at least in the top of that group, if not partners / executives at those firms, which I believe is often an eight figure job. If they could stomach the work, that is...