Death of Professor Grimm: the world reacts

After the initial uproar amongst academics caused by the publication of Stefan Grimm’s damning posthumous email, discussion has spread amongst academics outside the English-speaking scientific community.

The biggest response by far has been seen amongst Chinese-speaking scientific academics. A number of mainland Chinese researchers, which include a mix of those stationed in UK universities and in Chinese academia, have discussed the issue at length on Chinese scientific news website Sciencenet.cn.

On his personal blog, Zhang-qi Yin, an academic research fellow at the Center for Quantum Information located in Tsinghua University’s Institute for Interdisciplinary Information Sciences, mused that “I believe that this common trend (of using research grant income as a KPI) in the West will be picked up by China very quickly; this gives me a strong sense of sympathy for my fellow academics, and dread.”

Several citizens have also voiced concern about the future of China’s academic culture, which believe that research in the West is more progressive and seeks to emulate their successes.

The impact, however, goes beyond that of the blogs hosted on and off the Sciencenet website.

Solidot, a tech portal set up by the China branch of international consumer tech media outlet CNET, also briefly covered the dcscience.net blog post.

China is not the only country whose news and social media portals have touched the issue. Following a tip-off from medical student Jesper N. Kjaer (@jespernkjaer on Twitter), videnskab.dk in Denmark also published a story summarizing the coverage from dcscience.net and the THE.

The virality of the story continues to grow, with dcscience.net receiving plenty of pingbacks from users sharing links to the blog post on Twitter and via their own blogs. A number of people have since adopted the #grimmdeath hashtag while voicing their thoughts on the issue, the majority of which have condemned the general culture of emphasizing “headline glory via grant input” and not the quality of output, plus the shift to a more business/administrative focus in universities.

While the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE) has wrapped up their formal consultation for their independent review on the role of metrics in assessing research quality, Colquhoun noted that two members of the consultation group are aware of the issue based on Twitter commentary, and that his open letter to President Alice Gast has gone unanswered.

He has since strongly pushed for an independent external inquiry to be held, citing that “their present proposal that the people who let things go so far should investigate themselves has been greeted with the scepticism that it so richly deserves. I still live in hope that someone will be sufficiently courteous to answer this time.”

It seems the idea of “Publish and Perish” - the pressures to secure funding or lose your job, are not apparently unique to Imperial. It was also recently reported in the Independent that Academics at the University of Warwick have accused the university of treating them like “City Traders.” Staff were put on a risk of redundancy for not bringing in enough research income, with a benchmark set for them to reach of around £90,000.

Anne O’Sullivan, University and College Union regional official, added: “Warwick Medical School is at the forefront of cutting edge research into life-threatening illnesses, It should be looking to foster closer links and develop its expertise, not arbitrarily axing staff.

“The university’s approach demonstrates a worrying lack of understanding about research work and its funding. We would urge the university to step back from this unusual move and reconsider how the school might be able to meet targets.”

Felix was recently approached by the Imperial College branch of UCU, who we were told are investigating this incident:

The issue of management bullying and harassment of staff is not new to the UCU or the other staff trade unions. Indeed, UCU branch representatives have raised the issue repeatedly in regular meetings with College Management over the course of the last few years. On each occasion, we were informed that our concerns were noted and being taken seriously, but no further action has been taken.

This has become a particular problem in relation to staff performance, where with academic staff the focus is often exclusively on the level of research funding obtained and that other important non-research activities e.g. teaching which are an essential and integral part of a university are largely ignored.

Given that the circumstances are not yet clear, we can make no specific comment on the death of Professor Grimm, but we deeply regret that it has taken such a tragic event to give the issue highlighted in his posthumous e-mail the publicity it so clearly merits.

This issue is now in the public domain not only here in Britain: it is being discussed in other academic institutions across the world. The onus is clearly on senior College management to take decisive and immediate action.

We will continue to press for a change in the procedures and culture which facilitate bullying and harassment of staff at every level, and are determined to do everything we can to achieve this.

_Given the extensive publicity generated by Stefan’s death, we have set up a bullying sub-group in order to gather more information and evidence on this matter, in the hope that more staff will feel prepared to come forward and report more of their own experiences. All such contributions or discussion will of course be in the strictest confidence. _

You can contact us about this at ucu-office@imperial.ac.uk

Imperial College UCU executive