News & Views item - September 2005

 

 

And Now There Are 9 -- ARC's Committee to Scrutinise Quality or Something Like That. (September 8, 2005)

    The Australian Research Council has had its board of Directors axed by the Minister for Education Science and Training, Brendan Nelson which, as of next year, will reduce the impedimenta for the minister in steering the ARC to the right and narrow.

 

However, there now is a committee which appears to be set up to scrutinise the quality of the research proposals that have been awarded grants through ARC's peer review mechanism. As originally constituted it was comprised of five deputy vice-chancellors of research and Daryl Le Grew the vice-chancellor of the University of Tasmania.

 

Now The Australian reports that on the recommendation of the soon to be liquidated Board, Dr Nelson has appointed three laymen to join the six, conservative columnist P.P. McGuinness, media personality Ross Symonds and former High Court judge Daryl Dawson. It gives every indication of being compromise between the ARC Board and Dr Nelson. According to the paper's Dorothy Illing, "It follows an attempt by Dr Nelson last year to set up a community standards committee within the ARC, a move quashed by the ARC board... The quality and scrutiny committee was set up several years ago to advise the board on the quality of the grants process, for example, to look at matters of conflicts of interest among assessors and standards of applications across the board."

 

The addition of McGuinness, Symonds and Dawson will bring, according to a spokesman for Dr Nelson, "a community perspective to bear on the assessment of research proposals [and] extends the increasing focus in Australia, and in other countries, on the contribution of research to societal benefits."

 

Are there really people that talk like that?

 

Whether or not the laymen three will be asked to " advise the ARC's CEO on the quality of the grants process, for example, to look at matters of conflicts of interest among assessors and standards of applications across the board" has not been made public. If the situation weren't so serious the continued machinations by Dr Nelson to bring the ARC to heel would be meat for a third-rate farce.

 

Illing suggests that the inclusion of the lay three is probably to deflect the mostly uninformed criticisms by members of the media and federal cabinet of grants awarded through peer review because they have, for example, "funny titles" or are described in their abstracts in arcane language.

 

But in order to overcome this problem, at least partially, the ARC introduced this year a new qualification with regard to research proposals. "If the ARC judges that a project title and description do not adequately reflect the objectives and outcomes sought, the ARC reserves the right to change the project title and description."

 

Now, yesterday during a joint media conference with the Minister for Foreign Affairs and Trade, Alexander Downer, (see: DEST and DFAT Launch Education Without Borders: International Trade in Education) the following exchange occurred:

QUESTION: Do you have any comment on Paddy McGuiness's complaints that his appointment to the ARC has been a waste of time and window dressing and it's been a PR exercise for the government and also - that some of the titles put up by some of the academics were nonsense that were limited only by his limited ability to limit the nonsense?

 

DR NELSON: Well, if -

 

MR DOWNER: Were they his words or yours?

 

QUESTION: I think they were his.

 

MR DOWNER: Well, they're good.

 

DR NELSON: I don't know how many windows Paddy has dressed in the past but I'm - he's certainly not dressing mine. I have made it very clear to him this morning that he and the members of this committee will have access to all of the detail of the grants that they are considering. And I take very seriously their - I will be taking very seriously their advice in relation to grants for Australian Research Committee funding. I have to look the average Australian in the eye, who is a truck driver or is a gas fitter or works in a shop or a policeman or a nurse, and I have to assure them that every last dollar of that 600 million that we'll be putting in through the ARC is money well invested on research that serves the interests of them, their families and the future of the country. And I'm sad to say that I have not been satisfied in the recent past that all of the research projects put up by Australia's researchers are ones that serve the best interests of Australia.

That ought to keep those dastardly squandering peer reviewers in their place. Go for it, Sir Brendan, who says chivalrous champions are dead, but keep an eye out for windmills. 

 


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