Why am I writing this?

When I was considering setting up this blog a colleague asked me why I wanted to do it. The implication was that it would not score in the RAE (the UK universities’ Research Assessment Exercise) and so was not worth doing. We only think and write stuff for brownie points which can be cashed in for more money.

I find this very depressing. I’ve just been to a meeting to try and get some research moving. It was all about how to find out which journals would score highly and how to organise co-authorships to everyone’s advantage. But almost nothing on the actual topics of our research.

Similarly, there’s no culture of reading and commenting on each other’s work. No real interest in the power of thought, and in how the world can be improved. Just scoring points for a meaningless competition. If we get lots of points we’ll be able to hire more people to do more research to score more points and get more exhausted. But what’s the point of these points?

This is where this blog comes in. It will score no points but I can say what I think.