Story here. And do see the comment by Seiriol Morgan (Bristol):
Quite obviously, no one opposing the impact agenda is arguing that we should be perfectly happy for academic research to have no impact. On the contrary, we think that it should and does contribute very positively to society, including work done in the arts and humanities, and we're very happy about that. Our claim is that it is not possible to measure and quantify that impact, especially within the very short timeframe of the REF exercise, and especially within the arts and humanities. Consequently, if we insist on including the impact component in the REF, what it will actually be measuring is who can come up with the most elegant and superficially convincing tissue of bullshit. The insinuation that it is only out-of-touch stick-in-the-mud mid-career professors who oppose impact also seems highly suspect to me. What's the evidence for that? Lots of postdocs and early career people I know have signed the Ladyman petition. More generally, why won't these very important and powerful people own their own comments, rather than hiding behind rules of secrecy? Due to their positions of power, they surely can't be concerned that anything bad might come of it for them if we knew who had said what. Instead, one can't help suspecting that they are well aware that if we knew who they were they would find it harder to make baseless and disingenuous assertions, because they'd soon find themselves embarrassed when people called them on them.
Recent Comments