Science is getting bigger. Just about every scientific discipline — astronomy, conservation, drug development, genetics, neuroscience, physics — is organizing massive collaborations of researchers in the name of reaching massive goals. These so-called Big Science efforts have big budgets, big lists of participating institutions, big press coverage, and big pronouncements. Big Science isn’t new (the term was around in 1961, if not before), but it does seem to be getting more popular.

Take a project that readers of this blog are probably familiar with: the BRAIN (Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies) Initiative, which the world first heard about in February when President Obama mentioned it in his State of the Union address. The projected