Seeing the announcement of the 2017 Nobel Prize award in Physiology and Medicine:
Tag: research
A CALL FOR SCIENCE | MEXICO
Through the efforts of Mario Zurita et al., seven hundred colleagues based in Mexico, including me, have signed the following petition (translation is mine). The list of signatories can be downloaded here. (more…)
a comment on university mismanagement
My commentary below was prompted by this letter published earlier today by Liz Morrish in the Times Higher Education. Since yesterday there has been a concerted effort by UCU and the Guardian to expose the crude exploitation of half of the academic staff in Universities in the UK. Adding to the insult, managers ‘disappear’ through restructuring permanent positions. The issue is whether Professors should be fired when they do not produce the outputs requested by their ‘bosses’ (sic). (more…)
Recycling of bad managers is disastrous
I noticed visits to this blog from DailyNous “Serious Cuts and Stark Choices at Aberdeen“. I asked whether the former Science & Engineering Vice Principal at Queen Mary, Jeremy Kilburn, was repeating one of his destructive assaults against colleagues? At Queen Mary he convinced academics to strike; an act he repeated at the University of Aberdeen. Unfortunately, according to the BBC, it looks like Kilburn continues to call for academic sackings. I wish he fails and faces instead the sack himself. (more…)
New facet of scientific illiteracy
In Mexico, bean-counting is also referred to as puntitis (Jorge Quevedo) or cuentachilismo (Marcelino Cereijido). My local colleague and celebrated author has created with his student Claudia Edwards a three-paragraph gem on the stupidity of bureaucratic managerialism in science. You can read it in Spanish here. The text is so good that I have translated the 5 concrete examples of “modern” stupidity below. The international reader will instantly see that the crisis Pirincho (as Marcelino is also known to his friends) describes is by no means a “third world” problem.
A few reminders of what Restruction is all about.
Restruction is “dESTRUCTION by means of a Restructuring exercise”.
fanismissirlis 