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Is Societal Impact Wholly Irrelevant to Research Funding Decisions?

Brian Leiter

Mark Lance (Georgetown) takes issue with the letter (but not the spirit) of the recent petition about the proposed "impact" standard for research funding in the U.K.:

I'm a bit bothered by the rhetoric of this petition.  It doesn't just urge that funding be a function of excellence, but that it be a function "solely" of excellence.  Now I don't think anyone could believe that taken literally.  Equally excellent philosophy and physics research should be funded equally when the latter costs many orders of magnitude more? But even if we suppose that to be rhetoric and the point to be to eliminate "impact" assessment, do we really want to say that one should fund equally for a bit of medical research that would cure cancer and for a really really good re-interpretation of Proust?  Doesn't the social good count for anything?  Is there no reasonable way to take that into account?

I don't doubt that this is being done in a heavy-handed and irrational way, and used to simply bludgeon humanities, arts, and other valuable pursuits.  But the petition seems sufficiently overstated as to be counter-productive.  To simply act as if there is nothing at all to assessing how valuable a bit of research is to society  makes academics look frivolous, and to the non-academic world sounds like turf-defense.

I'd much prefer a more nuanced response, not that I really have a vote since I'm not in the UK.

Thoughts from readers and/or petition signatories?  Signed comments preferred, as usual.  Submit your comment only once, they may take longer than usual to appear due to my limited computer access currently.

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20 responses to “Is Societal Impact Wholly Irrelevant to Research Funding Decisions?”

  1. Neil Levy

    Like Mark, I'm not wholehearted in my support for the petition. Despite working the UK part time, I'm not eligible to sign it, so I didn't need to confront that dilemma. Obviously societies have a right and a responsibility to allocate funds in productive ways. But a good society also (if it can) has room for and supports activities that are valuable only intellectually as well. In support of the petition it might be said that there is a strategic point to overstating one's demands; it may be that (in the unlikely event that the petition has an impact at all) impact is more likely to receive due weight if a rejectionist position is taken than a more moderate one,

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  2. Matt Brown

    I agree with Mark Lance on both points. How valuable research is must be measured by more than just an internal assessment of scholarly excellence. But, of course, most attempts by government to hand out funding according to "impact" will be "heavy-handed and irrational." After all, there is all kinds of knowledge which is valuable to society despite not increasing GDP. Nevertheless, it is entirely reasonable that projects that meet urgent needs get a greater amount of funding reflecting that urgency, and accompanied by standards of excellence that make it likely that such an investment will pay off.

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  3. Ross Cameron

    I can't see the bit in the petition that says that how much funding research gets should solely be a function of excellence. The petition I signed says just that research should be judged solely on academic excellence. On both the old and new systems, some money will be allocated to philosophy and substantially more money to curing diseases: the question then is how to divvy up that money amongst the competing philosophers and medics. The old proposal says: look to how good their research is. The new one says: look in part to how good their research is, and also to what impact it makes. The petition says the old way is better. No one is saying that metaphysics should be getting as much money pumped into it as curing cancer, only that the best philosophers get the philosophy money and the best medics get the medicine money, rather than that the money goes to those who manage to show short term narrowly defined impact.

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  4. mark lance

    Ross: If the assumption is that the disciplinary division is prior in this way then the example is no good, but the point still is. WIthin medicine there will be some research that is very likely to lead to immediate benefits to millions and some that is almost purely of academic interest. Surely we should prefer the former. (In fact, I doubt they do apply it consistently this way. If so, things like malaria, malnutrition, clean water, etc. would get vastly more funding, but that's the application again.)

    And if that is the interpretation of the petition, then I don't understand why anyone is worried about cutting funding to philosophy etc. That worry seems to presume that there will be redistribution between fields.

    Aside from governmental assaults, I think there is actually an interesting question of whether it is possible to structure such assessments in ways that are genuinely conducive to social needs appropriately broadly construed.

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  5. Mike Otsuka

    For responses to Marc Lance's worries that are roughly along the lines of Ross Cameron's response, see these comments by Alexander Bird and me on Crooked Timber:

    http://crookedtimber.org/2009/10/16/petition-against-impact/#comment-291910

    http://crookedtimber.org/2009/10/16/petition-against-impact/#comment-292306

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  6. Matt Brown

    Even if the proposed ways of measuring impact are trash, I see no reason in principle for thinking that funding can't assess impact at a finer grain than whole disciplines. Why shouldn't philosophy proposals that promise greater social benefit receive more funding than those which promise little or no benefit? I also don't see any reason to believe that internal standards of excellence will perfectly correlate with social impact; indeed, it seems obvious that this is often not the case.

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  7. Lisa Shapiro

    Philosophy aside, funding research by impact, as opposed to by research excellence, has a consequence of defunding basic science in favor of applied science. While it might well be a good idea to promote applying current basic science, doing so at the cost defunding basic science presupposes that we already have all the basic science that is needed for 'innovative' applications. I would imagine those who engage in basic scientific research are incensed. In doing basic science, typically, you have no idea what the applications or impact will be.

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  8. Alex Gregory

    People seem to be focusing on the claim that academic funding be solely a function of excellence. Just to quote the whole of the relevant sentence:
    "Academic excellence is the best predictor of impact in the longer term, and it is on academic excellence alone that research should be judged."

    I took this sentence, and the petition as a whole, to claim not that we should reward excellence *instead* of impact, but rather to claim that impact is best assessed by assessing excellence.

    Put negatively, the claim seems to be that attempts to measure impact directly will end up measuring something else: most likely, demonstrable short-term impact. And allocating funding on the basis of that would be bad, *both* for research excellence *and* for impact more generally.

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  9. Ross Cameron

    Mark, the worry that funding to philosophy will be cut is that the prior divisions are more coarse grained than 'metaphysics versus medicine'. It's 'humanities v medicine', etc. The worry is that who gets the humanities money will be decided by ability to bullshit on impact statements rather than on academic cred. University VCs, Heads of Dept, etc, always had the ability to channel money for medics into specific areas that they deemed to be more worthy. Again, I don't think anyone is objecting to that.

    Matt: part of the problem is epistemic. Suppose we agree societal impact should make a difference to how funding is divvied up. Since many things that had a tremendous impact had it by accident (or at least, we couldn't have forseen it), how are we to make the decision?

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  10. Jason Turner

    Matt: Measuring methods aside, a large part of the concern is that measuring the future impact of quality research is in principle impossible. The argument here is inductive: who could have predicted that the work of (say) Frege and Russell on Logicism (and some of their contemporaries on the foundations of set theory, etc.) would have resulted in developments that made possible, among other things, the computer? Until the research was carried out, we didn't even have the conceptual resources to think about the things that could stem from the research program, much less predict them. So (at least part of) the opposition to the measure stems from the principle that the best way to get value for research is to let a thousand flowers bloom, fund those which are excellent in their own right, and be pleasantly surprised at what comes along — rather than trying to predict in advance which flowers are going to smell best.

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  11. Alessandra Tanesini

    I also worried a bit about the rhetoric of the petition (before signing it) and I appreciate Mark's concern which I do not think is completely address by the reply given by Ross Cameron.
    In my view the real problem lies with the notion of impact, which is not equivalent to social significance, relevance, or benefit. The government clearly thinks of impact in terms of measurable and short-term effects on non-academic audiences. This emphasis on quantifiable results will have negative consequences. Somebody (I believe Einstein) once said: 'Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted'. It is an acknowledgement of this fact that is missing in the current proposals.

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  12. Neil

    There seems to be a misunderstanding on the part of some American contributors to this thread (though I admit the possibility that the misunderstanding is mine: I am no expert on these matters). People seem to think that the funding mechanism is akin to grant proposals, and that researchers have to make a case for the expected impact of the research. As I understand it, the mechanism is retrospective: it funnels money to departments that can demonstrate excellence and impact during the relevant period. This fact means the worry about science leading to unexpected benefits is lessened (though not eliminated, since benefits may show up some time later). I suspect that as a matter of fact the claim is in any case exaggerated; though it is easy to think of basic research that led to important benefits, we often have a fairly good idea of which research is likely to have benefits and which is more curiosity-driven.

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  13. James Ladyman

    The statement 'there is no beer' is false when taken literally in answer to an question about available beverages, but of course in context it is immediately understood as meaning there is no beer in the fridge. Anyone reading my petition needs to put it in context. There is a specific set of proposals being adopted as policy by funding agencies in Britain and the petition is intended to voice objection to them. Anyone trying to post a petition on the no.10 website will find they limited to very few characters, and carefully nuanced and fully explicit and appropriately qualified statements are not an option. I am completely baffled as to why people are comparing funding philosophy with physics or cancer research in discussions of this matter. The additional text makes it clear that the petition is about research in the arts and humanities, and it is intended to complement a similar one concerning the sciences. I could not fit the words 'arts and humanities' into the short statement but please take the short statement in the context of the longer one and in the context of the policy that it is intended to oppose. That policy will seek to judge among departments of the same kind, say philosophy departments, according to which have more impact rather than solely on the grounds of the academic excellence of their research. The policy also demands that philosophy departments be judged jointly with religious studies departments at the same university, and does not allow for a separate panel of expert peer reviewers for different disciplines. It is also proposed to put people from business on panels that decide on the quality of academic work in order to apportion funding. Don't worry, if you sign the petition there is no danger of an overly literally minded politician deciding to give equal amounts of money to cancer research and literary criticism.

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  14. Ofra

    Neil – I think the epistemic problem is much more widespread than you suggest. To pick a more recent example: I read two separate interviews with both Carol Grieder (one of the 2009 Nobel prize winners in medicine) and with Ada Yonath (one of the 2009 Nobel prize winners in chemistry – on research which now looking likely to have a big medical impact). Both mentioned that their research started out being motivated by pure theoretical grounds, and that they did not predict its practical impact at the start. And (as you mention)even the retrospective funding model doesn't help in this respect: it often takes more than 5 or 10 years to realize what impact the research will have. (Yonath also mentioned that her research project took about 20 years to bear fruits!).

    Also, let's not forget that "social benefit" doesn't mean the same as "helps curing diseases or flying airplanes".

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  15. Jason Turner

    We should also note that "impact" doesn't (in the current proposal) mean "social benefit", either. Ayn Rand has had a very high *impact*, as witnessed by the number of prominent businessmen, Chairs of the Fed, etc., that have been influenced by and think (or thought, anyway) highly of her work, which is the sort of thing the current proposal is looking to promote. The signers of the petition think that (had the question come up) an academic unit with Rand as a member should not have received more funding, etc., simply because of how widespread her ideas became. Bad ideas can have a lot of impact, but that doesn't make them worth funding.

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  16. Robert Williams

    In case anyone is interested, the UCU (the big academic union in the UK) has a petition online that covers similar ground to the petition that's been under discussion here. Perhaps people might consider signing this one—the wording might be more to some people's taste. (I signed both).

    As far as I can see, it's also open to people worldwide to sign, unlike the one hosted on the government site.

    https://www.ucu.org.uk/index.cfm?articleid=4207

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  17. Simon Blackburn

    I have heard it said that an "impact" agenda has operated for some time in the Netherlands, and has significantly skewed both research effort, and jobs on offer, away from core epistemology, logic, or metaphysics and towards prisoners' dilemmas, social philosophy, bioethics etc. I would like to know if this is true, either in philosophy or in other subjects (historians junking research on medieval land use in favour of potboilers on the Third Reich, etc.)

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  18. David Hunter

    I share Neil's views about this, I am not sure what in principle is wrong with taking impact of research as one relevant factor in the distribution of research funds. In fact I'll go one step further, given limited funds to support research there ought to be some consideration of the societal impact of that research when distributing that funding.

    Of course it should be taken into consideration the epistemic difficulties in predicting future impact, so it would be inappropriate for this to be the only factor that counts. But that isn't the proposal on the table.

    I should also note, as an applied ethicist working in the UK people have typically avoided submitting under philosophy since it is felt applied ethics (and indeed ethics in general) was not likely to do well. As such perhaps impact will redress this a bit.

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  19. Eric Schliesser

    I am responding to Simon Blackburn's question about funding in the Netherlands. It seems to me that disproportionate funding goes to philosophy of technology, logic, bayesian projects, game theoretical projects, philosophy of language/linguistics, applied ethics, and social philosophy, all of which have been fairly successful in claiming social utility/relevance for their projects. Outside reviews have reinforced this trend by asserting that the Netherlands is a world leader in (say) philosophy of technology research. (The Amsterdam logicians also benefit from prestige of Van Benthem.) Right now there is almost no work, say, in analytic metaphysics or philosophy of biology in the Netherlands. (Even philosophy of mind is fairly small around here.) There are some terrific philosophers of physics in Holland, but they have captured relatively few research grants so far.

    It is very hard to disentangle cause & effect in these matters, especially because we're dealing with small numbers. The current research funding regime (in which most university PhD positions are funded through centrally evaluated, competitive research proposals that cover *group* projects) has not been in place for very long. Moreover, the adaptation of local intellectual traditions to the research regime, may provide some explanation; academic philosophy in the Netherlands appears to have had extreme polarization between schools of Hegelians/Heidegerrians, modern-day Logical positivists, and purist historians. The modern day logical positivists (who publish in English in journal articles) 'score' much better than (say) the latter-day Heideggerians. So, within Dutch analytic philosophy, there is built in hostility toward metaphysics (and history), which gets associated with Continental philosophy.
    In one of my areas, early modern philosophy, there is almost no research in Empiricism or Leibniz. Most of the projects that get funded focus on contextual approaches; few ever engage critically with the subjects studied. (This is as much due to research funding patterns and historical causes.)
    What is clear is that philosophy departments are (indirectly) being encouraged to specialize in areas of strength–so rather than going for breadth, they try to build up research groups that can attract regular funding for group projects, so that virtuous cycles can be sustained.

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  20. Thom Brooks

    I'm afraid that I don't share David Hunter's optimism.

    One major concern with 'impact' is we still do not know how precisely it will be measured. Indeed, HEFCE won't be reporting on this until probably next year. (Thus, we will only know in 2010 how possibly 25% of a department's score — used for funding purposes — will be derived measuring research from at least 2008.) It would make far more sense for HEFCE to get clear on impact first and then use it to assess departments afterwards. At present, we are all playing an expensive game, but the rules are still not settled.

    A second major concern is the timeframe for measuring 'impact'. What counts is 'impact' bearing fruit between 2008-12. This has a real danger of fostering a culture of aiming for short-term impact over long-term impact. In addition, there is the related concern that this timeframe is too brief to measure the impact of research.

    These concerns have led to a widespread endorsement of the petition written by James Ladyman that I readily signed.

    Reply

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