If you can't take the heat...

In what follows I am keen not to name names and point out that these comments are not aimed particularly at The University of Manchester.

There has been a lot of speculation about what is going to happen to the UK research budget in coming months. Regardless of who gets in after the election it looks like we're in for cuts, it's really about the magnitude of these.

I've been thinking a lot about ways of getting extra money into research (see other funding posts). One that particularly strikes me at the moment is that there are a lot of PIs who can only be described as utter shite.

Partly this is due to tenure (academics are very hard to sack), and partly it comes from a system under which credit can be earned by being 'a bit of an operator', which is not a good thing.

The ways in which academic awfulness manifests itself are many and varied, but I particularly lose heart when I encounter PIs that know nothing and lack vision. These people should be showing the way - too many are complacent, parochial and lazy.

Get rid of these people, bring in more competent (and cheaper) researchers, and one of your parents has just acquired a brother called Robert. This will bring more and better research for the same money.

Here's the rub - these people aren't under pressure from below. The underlings have no way of putting the squeeze on them. The solution is simple. Allow postdocs (anyone) to apply for grants on an equal footing.

Anyone who secures a grant is worth a research post, anyone who doesn't should be asked to leave. Harsh, but fairer than a system which keeps good people out of research at the expense of idlers (NB. not good Idlers). We already have competition for grants, but importantly i) the losers stay on, and ii) the majority of researchers cannot participate on an equal footing. Open it up and let the system trim off the waste.

(It's a strange mix of Socialism and Capitalism I peddle).