Beware the Poets

I'm worried about those clever people at Polaris House. Our great and glorious research leaders, those academic taste makers who hold UK funded research in the palms of their hands, seem to be entering the world of self parody.

A couple of weeks ago I devised the Research Council Priority Generator. This randomly mashed together abstract nouns to create strategic priorities that sounded edgy and thoughtful, but were ultimately empty and meaningless.

Whilst it highlighted how randomness could produce apparent profundity, I thought it was too exaggerated and  stupid to really bear any resemblance to reality. How wrong I was. Within hours of launching the Generator, the AHRC had produced its latest 'emerging theme': 'Care for the Future: Thinking Forward through the Past'.

Beautiful. I couldn't have invented a better nonsense programme myself. But, oh, it got better. The AHRC weaved together a fine piece of poetic prose to explain the rationale of the theme: it was, they gushed, 'an opportunity for researchers...to generate new novel understandings of the relationship between the past and the future, and the challenges and opportunities of the present through a temporally inflected lens'.

'New novel'? Really? 'A temporally inflected lens'? If I had a temporally inflected lens I'd be sure to take it down to Jessops to have it looked at.

But the muse is upon them, and they continue in a stream of consciousness that would make Molly Bloom blush:

'...these include questions around what is meaningful about continuity and change, and the role that narratives, experiences, visualisations, performances and stories have to play in these processes. Issues around understanding modes of cultural learning and intergenerational equity, as well as questions relating to authority, ownership and justice within and across time, may help inform understanding of current and future global challenges faced by society today. Technological development, alternative lifestyle movements, and the nature of ideological and philosophical, ethical and creative, historicised and imagined perspectives jostle for attention and require a diversity of approaches and disciplinary engagements for the theme to reach its full potential.'

It's like a postmodern disciplinary shopping list, complete with an unreliable narrator. It's all there, but it's up the reader to try and make sense of it.

However, the AHRC is not alone in bowing to the creative urge. Following swiftly on this is EPSRC's announcement that it will be running a 'creativity greenhouse'. They've already had us playing in 'sandpits', and the TSB is encouraging us to develop 'catapaults'. What analogy, metaphor or simile will they reach for next? The ESRC Trouser Press? The NERC Hostess Trolley? The BBSRC Kenwood Mixer? Now there's an idea for a new generator...

But should we welcome all this creativity? After all, other great leaders have succumbed to the inner poet. Barack Obama has written poetry, as has Jimmy Carter. But then, apparently, so has Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, Ivan the Terrible and Goebbels.

Hmm. On second thoughts perhaps the Research Councils should stick to their day jobs before they take UK research any further into this weird parallel universe.

Research Council Priority Generator

Ever wondered how the RCUK chiefs come up with the strategic priorities? Do they sometimes seem - well - slightly random?

Well Fundermentals has managed to get its hands on the software programme that they use to devise their clever, cross-cutting, interdisciplinary programmes. For the first time we, the people, can click RCUK's 'button of power' and create whole new areas of research endeavour.

Go to the 'Research Councils Priority Generator' to have a go.

What Are the ESRC Strategic Priorities for?

In the thick of the back-slapping love-in that was the ESRC Open Meeting last night, I felt a little like Banquo's ghost. I'm not saying that Paul Boyle's murdered anyone recently to be Thane of Swindon, or anything, it's just that I felt a little out of place. Don't get me wrong: I love the ESRC and admire all who sail in her, and I was made to feel very welcome, but I was taken aback by how uncritical the audience seemed to be. The questions were, generally, along the lines of, 'Paul, could I just agree with the previous questioner by saying how brilliant you are?' The toughest questions were saved for government departments (Boo! Hiss!) which, it was generally agreed, weren't pulling their weight in (a) using ESRC-sponsored research, and (b) telling the world how brilliant the ESRC was.

So, like the oik that I am, I waded in with an everso, everso slightly critical question. Feeling a little like a naughty schoolboy before the headmaster, I asked, - em – what did the panel think of Sir Paul Nurse's comments last week, when he took a side swipe at the EPSRC by attacking the concept of funders as 'sponsors'? After all, the ESRC's three 'strategic priorities' seemed to be a move in this direction.

Paul Boyle chortled like an indulgent Dumbledore, 'I certainly wouldn't want to comment on a sister research council,' he began, before explaining how the ESRC was cleverly treading the tightrope between shepherding the sector and giving them the space to do whatever they wanted via their responsive mode schemes.

Well, yes and no. You see, my problem with the ESRC priority areas is that I just don't get the point. For all its faults, the EPSRC is at least putting its money where its mouth is. You may disagree with the policy of 'shaping' its remit, but it's obviously decided what is important, and is now steaming ahead with putting into practice the changes necessary. Their priority areas do, at least, have some value – for better or worse.

The ESRC, on the other hand, has consulted widely, and has produced a 'bottom up' list that is so broad as to be almost meaningless:

• economic performance and sustainable growth;
• influencing behaviour and informing interventions;
• a vibrant and fair society.

Well, that's pretty much the ESRC's remit covered, then.

But what are social scientists meant to make of – or do with – this list? It was made clear that the priorities wouldn’t play a part in responsive mode funding; indeed, at the ESRC Study Day in September Michelle Dodson said that the ESRC would ‘only exceptionally’ provide ‘new investments’ in these areas.

So they don’t want to railroad the sector with the priorities, nor do they want to provide much funding for them. What's left? What are they for, and what will they do? Dodson did say that the priorities would be fulfilled by ‘enhancing impact from existing investments’ and ‘encouraging investments to work together.’

Make of that what you will. Of course, if you don’t like them, you needn’t worry, because there might well be a new set along in due course. Whilst they don’t want to revise them each year they might be (ahem) ‘refreshed annually.’

Okay, so I may joke about these priorities, but I do think there is an important point to make here. There’s been a lot of light and heat generated by these: as Boyle suggested, there was a long consultation process, involving 'taskforces', 'frameworks', 'discussions', and 'comment', to arrive at these fairly anodyne aspirations. The ESRC should now either back the priorities by committing wholeheartedly to them [*shudder*], or, more preferably, drop the pretence at being directive and allow the sector to decide for itself – through the peer review and funding of excellent research – what its priorities are.