Sir

Your Opinion article “Time to halt the gravy train” (Nature 414, 829; 2001) questions the salary and benefits packages paid by international laboratories. It is entirely correct that these should be scrutinized at a time when cost efficiency is high on the agenda of most institutions, but some of the comparisons you make are oversimplified and misleading. The reality is that the gravy train ground to a halt long ago.

In comparing CERN (the European laboratory for particle physics) with DESY, Germany's main high-energy physics laboratory, which is in Hamburg, for example, you fail to take into account the significant cost-of-living differentials between Geneva and most other European locations.

As you rightly point out, CERN conducts regular tracking studies which compare our salary and benefits packages with industry and other institutions that compete for the scientific, engineering, IT and other skills we need. In this context, CERN is primarily a provider of research infrastructure, supporting a user community of more than 6,000 scientists — only 90 of our 2,700 current staff are engaged in fundamental research. We are far from topping the compensation table: indeed, in some skills areas we find it increasingly difficult to attract suitably qualified people away from their home markets, particularly in northern Europe.

As your leader implied, multinational institutions must be increasingly efficient in managing their resources and in being able to justify the investments they make. Maintaining the skills levels and human vitality of CERN is fundamental to being able to fulfil its mission as one of the world's leading scientific research establishments. In my view, the budgetary pressures we and many comparable institutions face are such that one of our biggest challenges will be to remain competitive in this respect.