“The Haldane principle seems widely accepted in many parts of the world, but not so much in Australia. It holds that decisions about what to spend research funds on should be made by researchers, rather than politicians.
“It’s a simple principle, really. While the government might determine the rules of the game, it leaves the selection of contestants to those in the know. The sports minister doesn’t pick the Olympic beach volleyball team, for example. The tourism minister doesn’t pick the beach.
“But the distinction seemed lost on shadow science minister Paul Fletcher, who resorted to a well-worn tactic – mockery – when explaining why former education minister Stuart Robert had seen fit to kibosh a paltry 1 per cent of the grants presented for his signature.
“So that Australians can draw their own conclusions, let me just mention the titles of three of the projects which were rejected,” Fletcher told parliament on Tuesday. “‘Spectacles, dress and second-wave feminism in the Philippines’ – that was the first. ‘Queer Tokyo: a cultural history’ was the second. ‘Beauty and ugliness as persuasive tools in changing China’s gender norms’ – that was the third.”
“It’s the pub test argument. Salt of the earth Aussies, who – unlike those ivory tower types, have an MA in common sense – recognise value when they see it. The pub test is often deployed against research proposals in the humanities, less so in STEM. What would your average Aussie Joe, halfway through his third schooner of Kosciuszko Pale Ale, make of a project titled “Synthesis and Characterization of Novel Zirconium Oxide-Crystalline Cerium(IV)Hydrogen Phosphate/ Polybenzimidazole, Polyaniline, Polyindole, Polycarbazole, Nanocomposites”?
“The many supporters of the bill to reform the Australian Research Council believe it will prevent ministers from spiking grants because they don’t like projects’ names. But some commentators have warned against unintended consequences.
“The specific worry is that the treatment of ARC schemes’ funding rules – as legislative instruments subject to disallowance motions – opens the door to new types of intervention and delay, as opposition and cross-benchers haggle, filibuster and road-test speculative clauses banning any project containing the word “queer”.
“There are two reasons not to worry too much about this. One is that all known instances of meddling so far have come from the government, not the opposition or cross-benchers. The other is that the funding guidelines apply as soon as they’re registered – not after the time frame for disallowance motions has run its course – so there’s little risk of added delays.
“The bigger risk is that the opposition reverses these reforms after it finds its way back into government. It surely has principles, but Haldane isn’t one of them.
“– John Ross, Asia-Pacific editor
john.ross@timeshighereducation.com”
I could write that if like me you are a person who is utterly riven personally and emotionally by the egregious and frankly monstrous career-ending failure of 21st century science to even TELL the general public what global heating, ecosystem death, pandemics and looming human food shortages are – to even acknowledge the polycrisis but to downplay and lampoon it with the late Prof Carl Sagan’s oil and finance industries’ bamboozle about evolutionary priorities, 3rd century Rome, dinosaurs & ice-cores and in general terabytes on terabytes of historical tosh that can tell us NOTHING even about our own living extant selves let alone any future – AND to be publicly derided in absurd reductionist Piagetian concrete operations (or arrested mental development primary-schooler) terms as being – yourself – though you may well be a world leader in the new operational or cultural branch of neuroscience called neurolinguistics (1), AND the completely innovative integral health, energy, heating & ecology studies, AND the radically overhauled Philosophy of Science fully incorporating religious, cultural, economic and political theory – as ‘anti-science…’
..you would, esteemed reader, just re-print the thing. breathtakingly crackers or was it in Hausfather’s terms gobsmackingly bananas as it may be to give future research funding decisions to either politicians OR Twentieth Century scientists, respecting not harrying hectoring or bullying.. for once as a dogged teacher and explainer leaving the mental task of appraisal-on-the-merits-of-a-presentation entirely in the hands, hearts and heads of your readers..
..ZH was talking heat pumping out of the North Atlantic Ocean 5 – 6 months ago. I include a link here which will help anyone understand a little better what it is the authentic not wildly overpaid Mickey Mouse scientists are doing with their time and your money, team:
John Blundell
South Australia 08022024 🦘🇦🇺🌏
1. no direct connection with the STRUCTURALIST MIT Noam Chomsky psycholinguistics of the early 1980s but exclusively addressed to human consciousness and NOT AT ALL to 1930s Social Darwinism or vile BF Skinner coercive, manipulative or punitive Behaviour Modification
Billionaire-🙈🙊🙉🐒s with Olivettis 