I think the story is bullshit. I think the supercollider was dead as soon as it was localized in Texas, i.e., as soon as other states (with other congressmen) weren't going to have it in their states.

Furthermore, it is my personal opinion that the science we will learn from the large Hadron collider will ultimately yield less that is interesting or useful than what we would learn with an equivalent amount invested in "small project science" in thousands of laboratories. I also would argue that the Human Genome Project was a much better investment in fundamental and applied knowledge. I think that a lot of the American scientific community weren't all that enthralled with the supercollider if the same money could have been expended in other scientific ventures and I think that many scientists were saying so at the time.