{"id":3075,"date":"2017-02-14T22:21:58","date_gmt":"2017-02-14T21:21:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/scurry\/?p=3075"},"modified":"2017-02-14T22:21:58","modified_gmt":"2017-02-14T21:21:58","slug":"status-report-february-2017","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/scurry\/2017\/02\/14\/status-report-february-2017\/","title":{"rendered":"Status Report \u2013\u00a0February 2017"},"content":{"rendered":"

I said when I started this blog in 2008<\/a> that I would not promise to post regularly, so as to avoid the endless repetition of apologies for failing to write. And I\u2019m not about to start apologising now, even though the regularity of my posting is not what it once was \u2013 not even close. But I’m disappointed that I seem to have got out of the habit and I\u2019d like to turn that around.\u00a0<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve been busy, you see. I know it\u2019s a boring and commonplace excuse. I know we\u2019re all\u00a0busy \u2013 and, believe me, I try not to trot out that answer whenever anyone starts up a casual conversation with \u201cHow are things?\u201d, but here I am in mid-February and only now have I a moment to pause and have a look around at 2017.\u00a0<\/p>\n

I\u2019m not going to go into all the details tonight but in the past couple of weeks there has been \u2014 among other things \u2014 the all-too-common academic treadmill of exam marking (a pile of scripts to be second-marked still awaits me in the office) and a slew of grant proposals to be graded for an upcoming panel of the European Research Council. That was a lot more interesting that marking exams which \u2013 no offence to my students \u2013 is a very repetitive task, but I\u2019ll talk about that another time since it takes me into the topic of research evaluation, which has become something of a hobby horse.\u00a0<\/p>\n

While on that horse I was also recently occupied helping to prepare the announcement of the news that Imperial College has signed<\/a> the San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment \u2013 something I\u2019ve been campaigning for<\/a> more or less since the initiative was launched back in 2013. Again I\u2019ll have more to say on that subject another night. Soon, I hope.\u00a0<\/p>\n

And speaking of campaigns, Science is Vital<\/a> is currently pressing government and parliament to ensure that, whatever happens in the Brexit negotiations, the UK fights to keep close and productive research relationships with the EU (including funding mechanisms if at all possible) and protects the rights of EU nationals working as researchers in this country. The plans for our lobby a couple of weeks ago gobbled up more chunks of time in early 2017.<\/p>\n

\"Science<\/a>We might be smiling but inside we\u2019re crying. Brexit \u2013 what a shambles.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

The lobby itself was great, but in some ways also a disappointment. Andrew Steele and I wrote up an account<\/a> for Robin Ince\u2019s new Cosmic Shambles site and I scribbled another one for the SiV blog<\/a>. What was great was the passion on show from the supporters, about thirty of them, who turned up to plead with MPs. But we had struggled to rally the numbers we needed to button-hole every single parliamentarian and the woeful performance of Parliament in the debates over the Article 50 Bill only reinforced the scale of the task ahead.<\/p>\n

I thought I\u2019d be getting the hang of Brexit by now but find I\u2019m just getting more and more angry at the reckless stupidity of it all. I\u2019ve tried to seek out Leave voters on Twitter who can point me to the upsides of Brexit and drawn a series of blanks. Scientifically, economically, socially, this is just the wrong direction for this country. Last Saturday night I went with my family to to Bridget Christie\u2019s angry, funny Edinburgh show about Brexit and to see her spitting and spluttering with artful incredulity about it all was cathartic \u2013 but only for a while. I think I\u2019m going to spend the rest of my life agitating as a Brexit-skeptic. It\u2019ll serve those buggers right. In the meantime, watch this space \u2013 there\u2019s more to come.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"Queue<\/a>Queue for Bridget Christie on a cold, wet February night<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I said when I started this blog in 2008 that I would not promise to post regularly, so as to avoid the endless repetition of apologies for failing to write. And I\u2019m not about to start apologising now, even though … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[333],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3075","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-icymi"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/scurry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3075","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/scurry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/scurry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/scurry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/scurry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3075"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/scurry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3075\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/scurry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3075"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/scurry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3075"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/scurry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3075"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}