Some experts say too much hype and not enough candor on the part of scientists about the promises and perils of what they do could boomerang into a public relations disaster for science, opening the door for charlatans and demagogues.

Some in the public have fears about the Large Hadron Collider, centering on about creating black holes or hypothetical particles called strangelets, which critics said could transform the Earth almost instantly into a dead, dense lump.

Independent studies by two groups of physicists calculated that the chances of this catastrophe were negligible, based on astronomical evidence and assumptions about the physics of the strangelets. One report put the odds of a strangelet disaster at less than one in 50 million.