Are We Managing To Destroy Science? - Reading Test Answers

Location: Paragraph 2

The goal of this regular five-yearly check-up of the university sector is easy to understand: to increase productivity within public sector research.

Location: Paragraph 3

Academic institutions are already preparing for the RAE with some anxiety—understandably so, for the financial consequences of failure are severe.

Location: Paragraph 3

Academic institutions are already preparing for the RAE with some anxiety—understandably so, for the financial consequences of failure are severe.

Location: Paragraph 4

The pressures are forcing research management onto the defensive.

Location: Paragraph 4

Common strategies for increasing academic output include grading individual researchers every year according to RAE criteria, pressurising them to publish anything regardless of quality, diverting funds from key and expensive laboratory science into areas of study such as management, and even threatening to close departments.

Location: Paragraph 4

Common strategies for increasing academic output include grading individual researchers every year according to RAE criteria, pressurising them to publish anything regardless of quality, diverting funds from key and expensive laboratory science into areas of study such as management, and even threatening to close departments.

Location: Paragraph 4

Another strategy being readily adopted is to remove scientists who appear to be less active in research and replace them with new, probably younger, staff.

Location: Paragraph 5

Although such measures may deliver results in the RAE , they are putting unsustainable pressure on academic staff.

Location: Paragraph 6

But prolific publication does not necessarily add up to good science.

Location: Paragraph 8

Senior academics managing this situation might be well advised to demand a long-term view from the government.

Location: Paragraph 9

Unfortunately, management seems to be pulling in the opposite direction.

Location: Paragraph 6

However, their early publication records would preclude them from academic posts if the present criteria were applied.

Location: Paragraph 8

It seems that the atmosphere surrounding the RAE may be stifling talented young researchers or driving them out of science altogether. There urgently needs to be a more considered and careful nurturing of our young scientific talent. A new member of academic staff in the chemical or biological laboratory sciences surely needs a commitment to resources over a five- to ten-year period to establish their research.