Mark Bodnarczuk

Breckenridge Institute

It’s hard to fully grasp the impact that creativity has had on our world. Imagine if you could snap your fingers and make the products of human creativity disappear—everything that is man-made. How would your world change? Reality is a product of the creative process. Reality is man-made. Island of Excellence is a teaching novel that takes readers...

Physicists in HEP have been forced to organize large scientific projects without a well defined organizational or sociological model to guide them. In the absence of such models, what structures do experimentalists use to develop social structures in HEP In this paper, I claim that physicists organize around what they know best, the physics problem...

During the 1970s and 1980s, the experimental particle physicists at large laboratories responded to the limited funding context of that time. Unlike the "big science" in the postwar decades, when funding for research appeared unlimited and many parameters grew exponentially, the even larger-scale "megascience" of the 1970s and on was shaped by comp...

Editors Laurie Brown, Max Dresden, Lillian Hoddeson and Michael Riordan have brought together a distinguished group of elementary particle physicists and historians of science to explore the recent history of particle physics. Based on a conference held at Stanford University, this is the third volume of a series recounting the history of particle...

Three major issues surround the relationship between peer review and QA in basic research environments. These issues are explored using examples from the development of an institutionwide QA program at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (Fermilab), which is operated by Universities Research Association, Inc. under contract with the United St...

Article submitted to Quality Progress.

In this paper, I describe a conceptual framework that uses DOE Order 5700.6C and more than 140 other DOE Orders as an integrated management system -- but I describe it within the context of the broader sociological and cultural issues of doing research at DOE funded facilities. The conceptual framework has two components. The first involves an inte...

Three years ago there were no standards or published guidelines for quality in research environments. Today, one standard has been published, and three guidelines documents are in final draft form and about to be published. In this paper, I describe the events that led to the writing of DOE 5700.6C, 10CFR830.120, and DOE-ER-STD-6001-92, focusing on...

Within the context of doing basic research, this paper seeks to answer four major questions: (1) What is the authority structure of science. (2) What is peer review. (3) Where is the interface between basic physics research and standard engineering. and (4) Given the conclusions to the first three questions, what is the role of the QA professional...

This paper begins by raising the issue of whether the theoretical model of customer-suppliers-products-services usefully describes the activities of laboratory life, using a case study from Fermilab. After describing scientific activities as work, not volunteerism, I present a model that has four performance parameters that can be used to evaluate...

How does one assure that both quality and creativity are obtained in basic research environments QA theoreticians have attempted to develop workable definitions of quality, but in more reflective moments, these definitions often fail to capture the deeper essence of the idea of quality.'' This paper asserts that creativity (as a product of the huma...

After a brief overview of the mission of Fermilab, this paper explores some of the problems associated with designing internal QA audits. The paper begins with several examples of how audits should not be designed, then goes on to analyze two types of presuppositions about organizational structure (reductionism and emergence) that can be misleading...

This paper opens with a brief overview of the purpose of Fermilab and a historical synopsis of the development and current status of quality assurance (QA) at the Laboratory. The paper subsequently addresses some of the more important aspects of interpreting the national standard ANSI/ASME NQA-1 in pure research environments like Fermilab. Highligh...

The struggle to develop quality management concepts that ``map`` onto the cultural and work practices found in basic and applied research environments has been (for better or for worse) an attempt to differentiate basic and applied research from the nuclear industry. In the first (1990) edition of this ``Music Book`` proceedings, almost every labor...

After a brief description of the goal of Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (Fermilab) this paper poses and answers three questions related to Quality Assurance (QA) at the Laboratory. First, what is the difference between 'orthodox' and 'unorthodox' QA and is there a place for 'orthodox' QA at a laboratory like Fermilab. Second, are the deeper...

This paper addresses the underlying problems involved in developing institution-wide QA programs at DOE funded basic research facilities, and suggests concrete ways in which QA professionals and basic researchers can find common ground in describing and analyzing those activities to the satisfaction of both communities. The paper is designed to be...