Wednesday 23 September 2009

REF consultation document published

For anyone interested in how research funding is allocated (fascinating stuff, I know), a consultation document on the Research Excellence Framework (REF) is now available here. REF is the mooted replacement for the old Research Assessment Exercise (RAE), the last one of which was conducted in 2008. Enjoy...

6 comments:

Dr Aust said...

RAE... REF... plus ca change.

I recommend this Times Higher story for a good first-up "Err... is that all there is?" view. And the first comment below the article is brilliant.

Paul Wilson said...

Yes, after all that it doesn't seem to be radically different to the RAE.

Is that the right link, or did you mean this one?

Dr Aust said...

Ooops - I actually meant this link, though the one I inadvertently posted is pretty funny. Terence Kealey can usually be relied upon to say something silly, and he has really gone for the gold this time, not to mention getting some national newspaper coverage. Note his attempted clarification halfway down the THE comments thread.

Going back to the RAE-into-REF stories, the comment I really liked under the one I originally meant to cite was the one from "William":

"So basically in creating the REF, what they've done is they've taken the RAE, removed the A, shifted the E into the gap, and added an F. Well done, lads! Brilliant work!"

Paul Wilson said...

"So basically in creating the REF, what they've done is they've taken the RAE, removed the A, shifted the E into the gap, and added an F. Well done, lads! Brilliant work!"

I think this is where Private Eye would say "Trebles all round!"...

Dr Aust said...

Indeed. And don't forget "...and large payrises...!"

I'm curious to see what David Colquhoun has to say about the REF... but he may well simply be speechless...

Greg Kochanski said...

Well, no. They actually changed things in an important way. They made it important that all departments demonstrate their "impact" on the UK economy.

Now, what is impact? Well, the only kind of impact you can measure is short-term impact. What the REF is going to do is push UK research towards short-term applied stuff.

What's wrong with that? Well, short-term is fine, if you more-or-less know how to solve your problems. But, it can be disastrously expensive if you don't. Remember when the USA started the "War on Cancer" in 1971? Looking back, they didn't know even enough biology to know that they didn't know enough.

One could (and we did) spend billions on short-term research that yielded little value, except where it taught us some basic biology.

So, I'm not happy with the REF, and I think that there are some changes in there that will have surprisingly unpleasant effects, a few years down the line.

Doing maths? Well, it better be something like image processing. Doing particle physics? Well, it better be useful to treat cancer. Doing Chemistry. Do you mean to say it's not related to carbon capture? Doing philosophy? Well, you'd better provide some public entertainment.

You can find a more detailed critique at
http://kochanski.org/blog/?paged=10.