THE: Conservatives may scrap potential-impact terms
Branwen Hide
Friday, 09 October 2009 15:27 UTC
In an article published in today’s Times Higher Education, by Melanie Newman, David Willetts the Shadow Universities Secretary indicates the “Conservatives will not force academics to demonstrate the potential impact of their research before it is funded”.
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Replies
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this is a very brave but rather naive (uninformed?) statement: that would imply a hell of a lot of policy disentanglement to achieve this, even only remotely. And of course, what else would you say to attract votes from the science base? ;)
This makes me wonder, would that be this simple though, would that be enough to say “let’s forget about impact” to really make a change. That wouldn’t affect publishing behaviours of course, or publishers’ appeal for the hot and trendy and the temporary veneer that comes with it, that wouldn’t do much either to the current climate of careful competition between research groups and what this means for data exchange and so forth.
Isn’t all that part of one and same thing?
Or maybe a real change come from educating MPs and ministers about scientific research actually is?
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