  The stability problem of Randall-Sundrum braneworld is readdressed in the
light of stabilizing bulk scalar fields. It is shown that in such scenario the
instability persists because of back-reaction even when an arbitrary potential
is introduced for a canonical scalar field in the bulk. It is further shown
that a bulk scalar field can indeed stabilize the braneworld when it has a
tachyon-like action. The full back-reacted metric in such model is derived and
a proper resolution of the hierarchy problem (for which the Randall Sundrum
scenario was originally proposed) is found to exist by suitable adjustments of
the parameters of the scalar potential.
