Mark Lance (Georgetown) takes issue with the letter (but not the spirit) of the recent petition about the proposed "impact" standard for research funding in the U.K.:
I'm a bit bothered by the rhetoric of this petition. It doesn't just urge that funding be a function of excellence, but that it be a function "solely" of excellence. Now I don't think anyone could believe that taken literally. Equally excellent philosophy and physics research should be funded equally when the latter costs many orders of magnitude more? But even if we suppose that to be rhetoric and the point to be to eliminate "impact" assessment, do we really want to say that one should fund equally for a bit of medical research that would cure cancer and for a really really good re-interpretation of Proust? Doesn't the social good count for anything? Is there no reasonable way to take that into account?
I don't doubt that this is being done in a heavy-handed and irrational way, and used to simply bludgeon humanities, arts, and other valuable pursuits. But the petition seems sufficiently overstated as to be counter-productive. To simply act as if there is nothing at all to assessing how valuable a bit of research is to society makes academics look frivolous, and to the non-academic world sounds like turf-defense.
I'd much prefer a more nuanced response, not that I really have a vote since I'm not in the UK.
Thoughts from readers and/or petition signatories? Signed comments preferred, as usual. Submit your comment only once, they may take longer than usual to appear due to my limited computer access currently.
