Academic community fights back in row over research restrictions

The academic community gave its clearest signal yet today that it was fighting back against plans which would 'wreck the very basis of innovation in knowledge', according to UCU.
 
Over 13,500 academics have signed a petition from the union against proposals from the research funding quango that would force 25% of future research to be assessed on 'economic impacts.' The proposals, announced by the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE) in September, have been condemned by the academic community as an attack on curiosity-driven research.
 
UCU said if researchers had been operating under the new guidelines, which have not yet been tried anywhere else in the world, many crucial discoveries would have been missed. The union added that a quote from Albert Einstein neatly summed up its case: "If we knew what it was we were doing, it would not be called research, would it?"
 
According to Professor Donald Braben, Honorary Professor, Department of Earth Sciences at the University College London, virtually every major scientific discovery ever made would not have survived the current proposals with the emphasis on economic impact. UCU has produced a report that looks in greater detail at how some of our most crucial breakthroughs would not have been discovered without curiosity-driven research. To view that report visit:  Discoveries that would not survive the REF [84kb] 

To put the figure of 13,500 signatures in perspective, around 50,000 people were entered into the last research assessment exercise. The signatories come from the full range of academic disciplines and include six Nobel Prize winners, over 2,800 professors. The union said it would be handing every signature over to HEFCE as part of its evidence against the plans later this month and urged any members of the academic community yet to register their opposition to the plans to do so as soon as possible.
 
UCU general secretary, Sally Hunt, said: 'Academic research should never be at the behest of market forces. History has taught us that some of the biggest breakthroughs have come from speculative research and it is wrong to try and measure projects purely on their economic potential. If implemented these plans would wreck the very basis of innovation in knowledge.
 
'Academic research benefits all of society and we shouldn't be looking to reduce it to a series of 'impact indicators'. If the government wants Britain to be a world leader in innovation it should be listening to the thousands of academics who have signed our petition, not the siren calls of big business.'
 
John Dainton, Professor of Physics at the University of Liverpool and Founding Director & Chief Scientist of the Cockcroft Institute of Accelerator Science, said: 'The introduction of "impact" as a criterion jeopardises, rather than enhances, the excellence of research and scholarship, and therefore reduces the return to all our paymasters, the UK taxpayer. Because this is proven, and because I am one such taxpayer, I have no alternative but to warn of the damage of using 'impact' in such a way until this is understood. I would not be doing my duty both as a scientist and as a taxpayer if I didn't persist with my objections.'
 
James Ladyman, Professor of Philosophy at the University of Bristol, said: 'The research plans proposed for the arts and humanities ignore and undermine the values essential to scholarship, in particular, the commitment to curiosity-driven research. It is not possible to predict the value of research or to assess its effects with any reliability. The best predictor of the social value of research is its academic excellence.'
 
Selected signatories to the UCU petition:

• Sir Tim Hunt (Nobel); Sir John Walker (Nobel); Sir Harold Kroto (Nobel); Sir Richard Roberts (Nobel); Professor Brian Josephson (Nobel); Professor Venkatraman Ramakrishnan (Nobel); Professor Richard Dawkins; Professor Denis Noble; Professor Steven Rose; Professor Steve Jones; Professor Don Braben; Professor John Dainton; (all scientists)
• Professor Fritz Ursell; Sir John Ball (both Mathematics)
• Sir Tony Wrigley; Dame Janet Nelson (both History)
• Professor Jonathan Glover; Professor James Ladyman (Philosophy); Professor T J Clark (Art History); Professor Allyson Pollock (Public Policy); Professor Richard Sennett (Sociology).