HEFCE announces Research Excellence Framework, metaphysicians seen looking uncomfortable
The announcement is here and the document is here (PDF and, worse, Microsoft Word). There’s a few sensible things in there: is basically implements citation counting as a way of measuring the relevance of work in the hard sciences - but allows the other funding bodies to work out what is best for each discipline. It uses the word “impact” a lot, and even uses it as a plural - Impacts will be assessed
(by a structural engineer? a forensic pathologist? a detective?) - when the word they really mean is influence. That’s pretty annoying considering it’s a document about higher education - you’d think the people assessing research in UK universities and higher educational institutes (or ‘HEIs’ - you can’t just say universities) really need to have someone stick a copy of Strunk and White in a relevantly-sized orifice.
There’s some other good stuff: they take into account in their assessment how the universities train researchers. Hopefully this will prompt univerisites to make sure they are providing a good deal for their postgraduate students.
But there is some pretty gnarly stuff too, namely all those impacts. 25% of the assessment is based on the ‘impact’ of the work. Now, you say, let us imagine the ‘impact’ of Aristotle: he pretty much founded biology as a subject, but also philosophy, and set the agenda along with Plato for the next few thousand years. Okay, but did he create new business opportunities, commercialise any new products, attract investment from global business, improve public services, improve environmental sustainability, social welfare, social cohesion, national security or health outcomes? Well, kind of, but that’s really missing the point. There is ‘cultural enrichement’ too - how do they measure that? Well, they do surveys of the public to find out if they are being culturally enriched. Great. Hey, if you think Professor Jones is culturally enriching you, press the red button now. What next? Academics on Big Brother?
I’ll tell you about cultural enrichment: my primary philosophical interest at the moment is the problem of universals. I’m broadly an Armstrongian about universals, although a reluctant one (I would rather like trope theory to be true). I have tried to explain to people outside of philosophy what it is that I’m up to, and they just look at me like I’m a Martian before rushing off to buy more beer. That’s fine by me. Cultural engagement or something.
Don’t get me wrong: philosophers should try to engage with the public by publishing books and papers, appearing on radio and podcasts (Philosophy Bites is a great example), commenting on topics of public interest - but not at the cost of working on interesting problems. The REF consultation explicitly does not include the intellectual influence of work in the assessment of influence - sorry, impact. What this means is we are going to have more academics-for-hire, doing very goofy research that gets republished in the news. There’s cultural engagement for you, and creation of new business opportunities that attracts global capital investment - and, well, the tax on the businesses which are enabled by phony science-for-hire PR research bullshit improves public services and all that entails. If we go slightly reductio ad absurdum on this, what we have is a situation where if I want to do a Ph.D in analytical metaphysics and try to produce an honest piece of work that says something new and interesting for other metaphysicians to read, that’s going to get ignored in favour of bullshit PR stories put out by academics for hire: things like the “saddest day of the year” (hint: now is a good time to book a holiday), ropey claims about Facebook causing cancer and so on. I’d like to be wrong about this.
Do go and read Peter Smith’s post and the comments on Leiter Reports.
Queen’s Gate, London, England
