AFR:  Reduced Research Undermines Scientific Progress. (March 22, 2006)

    The Australian Financial Review today published the following letter from Peter Hall, Professor of Statistics, The Australian National University and The University of Melbourne.

A major worry is the reduction in research diversity to which the RQF will probably lead. In an era where frontier fields of science are becoming highly multidisciplinary, reduced diversity is bound to have negative consequences.

Achieving diversity is a significant problem in a small scientific enterprise, like Australia's. Being small doesn't mean we don't need to cover the same research bases as a larger nation; for example, when we bring together different disciplines to model salinity and climate change, or to work on problems in genomics.

Moreover, there is inherent instability in narrowly defined environments. In science this can mean that if a key person leaves Australia to take a job, then his or her research group collapses, and a vitally important area is lost.

Britain's experience with its analogue of our RQF is that diversity is reduced, and strategically important areas cease to exist. It will be worse in a country with one-third the population of the UK. You can't have a stable, functioning forest comprised entirely of tigers; you need the rest of the ecosystem as well. The RQF aims to eliminate all but the tigers.

Permit me to mention some disagreements I have with Aitkin's otherwise excellent article. For one thing, pure mathematicians no longer toast their discipline with the words, "May it never be any use to anyone". That toast is generally attributed to Henry Smith in the 19th century, and pure mathematics today is quite different.

Much pure mathematics research in the 21st century, although abstract, leads to important advances in major fields of application, such as bioinformatics and signal compression.

Also, I disagree with Aitkin's suggestion that applied research today is weighted less heavily than pure work.

In mathematics, for example, applied research generally leads to papers with higher impact factors which, for better or worse, can have greater standing in today's highly competitive universities.