February 2021
This month reports summarises four articles that in/directly relate to the impact of universities. The first paper discuss the death of disintresdness and the obfuscation of authorship (Mcfarlane 2019). The second paper discusses tensions between politics and science in modern democracies (Weingart 1999). The third paper surveyed researchers’ included in the REF 2014 case studies, towards their views on the impact assessment process (Watermeyer & Tomlinson 2021). The last looks at the co-production of knowledge and how that relates to power (McCabe et al. 2021).
1. The ethics of academic norms are changing. Nowadays, disintresdness is not only regarded as myth, the inverse is upheld as being desirable. In the sense that the more closely connected to its research subject, the more validity the claims ascertain, previously this would be regarded with scepticism. Equally, behaviour consider unethical, is now regarded as normal if not outright desirable in terms of authorship of papers. Not only is authorship a baseline requirement, there has been an inflation in authorship/publication, driven by grant capture targets, citation counts, PhD completion numbers and the like, which in their totality are the motor behind this changing moral landscape.
2. The scientific and political sphere are in tensions and have dependency relation in terms of access to resources and need for legitimation. This dynamic tensions leads to a ‘scientification of politics’, where politicians are in an ever search for the latest scientific results to justify their agendas. Whilst inversely, there is a ‘politicisation of science’ as knowledge is pushed into more and more uncertain areas where the personal/political agendas of the individual researchers become ever more prevalent. The abdication of political authority to scientific legitimacy, undermines the latter whilst creating a ‘catastrophe cycle’ in the hope for capturing attention and imagination of politicians in their struggle for resources. Whilst such a dynamic “could be self-defeating in the long run” (p. 160), short of revelation there seems to be no better process, and practically this implies that the boundaries of political and scientific authority need to be “constantly redrawn and reiterated” (p. 160).
3. The research conducted a survey of a random sample of a 1000 of the researchers related to the REF 2014 impact evaluation. They received 140+ survey respondence from researchers mentioned in REF 2014 case studies from the social sciences. A significant part wasn’t even aware that they were mentioned within case studies. In general, the individuals reported that they felt the impact assessment was more an institutional game than a form of any form of public accountability, challenging their view of what it means to be good academic. Many respondents felt the institutional requirements left little room for disagreement.
4. The research evaluated 24 projects funded by the Australian linkage scheme that is meant to facilitate and encourage academic-practitioner collaboration. They found that different forms of power (i.e. structural, normative and resource power) and how they compounded/conflicted represented reason of why certain projects failed whilst others succeeded. They conclude that current theories about knowledge co-production are naïve in their appreciation of the power dimension. They write: “[w]ith a fuller appreciation of the workings and effects of power, a more reflexive stance, as well as familiarity with enabling practices and techniques, academics will be able to engage with practitioners more deeply and on more equal terms.” (p. 22).
1. Macfarlane, B. (2019). The neoliberal academic: Illustrating shifting academic norms in an age of hyper-performativity. Educational Philosophy and Theory, 1-10.
2. Weingart, P. (1999). Scientific expertise and political accountability: paradoxes of science in politics. Science and public policy, 26(3), 151-161.
3. Watermeyer, R., & Tomlinson, M. (2021). Competitive accountability and the dispossession of academic identity: Haunted by an impact phantom. Educational Philosophy and Theory, 1-15.
4. McCabe, A., Osegowitsch, T., Parker, R., & Cox, S. (2021). Knowledge co-production in academic-practitioner research collaboration: An expanded perspective on power. Management Learning.
