V knjigi Living in the End Times (Verso, 2011) Slavoj Žižek omenja znanstveno skupnost kot morebitni model za "izboljšavo" sistema demokracije, kot ga poznamo danes. Vpraša se, ali se lahko družba kaj koristnega nauči tudi od novih oblik sodelovanja med ljudmi, ki se vzpostavijo v okviru velikih znanstvenih projektov:
... the achievement of democracy is to turn what for traditional authoritarian power is the moment of greatest crisis—the moment of transition from one master to another, the panic-inducing instant at which “the throne is empty”—into the very source of its strength: democratic elections thus represent the passage through that zero-point at which the complex network of social links is dissolved into a purely quantitative multiplicity of individuals whose votes are mechanically counted. The moment of terror, of the dissolution of all hierarchical links, is thereby re-enacted and transformed into the foundation of a new and stable political order. ...
The question today, now that we know the limitations of that formal procedure, is whether we can imagine a step further in this process whereby egalitarian negativity reverts into a new positive order. We should look for traces of such an order in different domains, including in scientific communities. The way the CERN community functions is indicative here: in an almost utopian manner, individual efforts are undertaken in a collective non-hierarchical spirit, and dedication to the scientific cause (to recreate the conditions of the Big Bang) far outweighs any material considerations. But are such traces, no matter how sublime, merely that—marginal traces? (Living in the End Times, Verso, 2011)
Kot je lepo prikazano denimo v odličnem dokumentarnemu filmu Particle Fever (2013), gre v Cernu za posrečen preplet izjemno učinkovito delujoče hierarhične skupnosti, ki hkrati ves čas ohranja radikalno egalitarnost vseh sodelujočih - ne samo v času volitev, kot to velja v demokraciji. Mogoče bi bilo ob tem zanimivo slišati še komentar koga, ki je dejansko delal ali še dela v Cernu?
Zanimivost: Na enem od vrhuncev filma Particle Fever, ko v ozadju predvajajo Beethovnovo Odo radosti in so vsi vzhičeni, ker bo vsak trenutek prišlo do prvih trkov delcev pri veliki energiji (drugi vrhunec je odkritje Higgsovega bozona), je zvezda filma za nekaj trenutkov Andrej Gorišek, ki je takrat delal v kontrolni sobi pospeševalnika. Po telefonu mu namreč sporočijo, da bo do dogodka, ki ga vsi nestrpno pričakujejo, prišlo čez nekaj minut. Vsem navzočim in medijem takrat sporoči: "They are a few minutes away from collapsing the separation bumps."