For those that don’t know the details, it is worth pointing out the following. The impact to be measured and rewarded is not the anticipated impact of the research: it is its past impact in the relevant period. And that impact will likely have been generated by research that was being carried out long before that. Just think how long it takes to get a drug to market. The research that is at the root of the impact may well be a decade or more in the past. So what is being rewarded is research that took place long ago. Consequently the rewarding of impact in the first REF has absolutely no motivational or incentivising power. In most fields there is absolutely nothing that can be done now to increase the impact that will be measured and rewarded in the REF. It is like trying to improve the environment now by rewarding people who recycled their rubbish a decade ago. Note also that impact in the REF does not mean dissemination. Mere dissemination is likely not to be enough. One would also need to show that the fact that people to whom one’s work was disseminated benefitted from that in some way.

More generally, this petition is really a bit of a joke—symbolic politics at its worst. First of all, why should any national body take seriously a few thousand signatures from people of miscellaneous origins? Petitions only make sense when those who are potentially subject to the rule petitioned about respond—not just any old schmo who happens to surf the net.

Also, there is the small problem that some disciplines—not least in the arts subjects—have already come up with ways of demonstrating their Impact. (e.g. attendance at events). Also, ‘user groups’ (including charities and NGOs) have come out praising the ‘impact’ that academic research has had on their activities. Whether this ‘impact’ is real is another matter but it certainly doesn’t help the cause of those who want to justify an impact-free research zone.

“Don’t be proud of seeming a fool—you may be one” (Wittgenstein).

PS Andthenyoufall, brilliant, LOL.

‘dark alleys’ and ‘without fretting’ indeed.

First, DoD projects aren’t – are they? – ‘blue skies’ – in the sense of pure, abstract etc. – research; perhaps in the original politicians’ sense of desperately casting around for inventive fixes to narrowly constrained problems. An exceptional willingness to take on technological projects with low expected success rate is not the same as seeking understanding without the restriction of any particular technical goal. The potentially very high (imputed) value, and low cost by military-industrial complex standards, make a nothing-too-insane scattergun approach quite rational, even including staring-at-goats type activities. But the approach generally subserves specific practical aims. I stand to be corrected of course. Maybe doing R&D for militaristic brutes is actually an efficient method of deriving important – and public – developments in science…

Second – while I’m baffled at why researchers should be given the additional, unrelated, job of publicising their findings, as comments here suggest the REM proposes, it seems reasonable that they should at least not keep them secret. The mind boggles at what techniques must have been developed in more than 1/2 a century of throwing DoD money at problems like sending people mad, brainwashing and mind control, information extraction, indetectible murder, ‘disintegration’ weapons, stealth who-knows-what etc. etc.

We hear about the wacky projects – the goats, gay bombs etc – 1st because they have been abandoned, 2nd for reassurance along ‘all conspiracy theories founder on the simple truth that everyone in any position of power is a total moron’ lines, 3rd for fostering a disorientating air of bizarre fantasy that makes the whole topic daunting and queasily unrespectable.

(And however perversely plausible a dismissive swipe at an only-slightly-straw-stuffed man may tend to be, I’m not terribly impressed with preemptive faux-authoritative claims like ‘contrary to what some might suppose, they don’t limit their inquiry to finding new ways to kill people’. ‘Some’ may indeed suppose something very like that, and with excellent justification.)

I note that an earlier petition for scientists had nearly 2,300 signatures (see here: http://petitions.number10.gov.uk/honest-discovery/). Of course, we will all have to wait and see if the powers that be will take such widespread multidisciplinary dissent seriously.

Yup, if YouGov can’t prove that your book on Rimbaud caused a 0.17% increase in national thoughtfulness, you’ve had it…

Now, how might such a study contribute directly to the growth of the British GDP? Hmm…

Ah, yes, the argument from textually unwarranted attribution of ridiculous beliefs. How could any online discussion proceed without it?

I’m happy to agree that resources should be directed to useful things. You seem very sure that you know which activities are useful, but you don’t explain why what those activities bring about is valuable. Can you expand?