Download Lectures on Biostatistics (1971). Corrected and searchable version of Google books edition
Download review of Lectures on Biostatistics (THES, 1973).
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This week’s Times Higher Education carried a report of the death, at age 51, of Professor Stefan Grimm: Imperial College London to ‘review procedures’ after death of academic. He was professor of toxicology in the Faculty of Medicine at Imperial. |
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Now Stefan Grimm is dead. Despite having a good publication record, he failed to do sufficiently expensive research, so he was fired (or at least threatened with being fired).
“Speaking to Times Higher Education on condition of anonymity, two academics who knew Professor Grimm, who was 51, said that he had complained of being placed under undue pressure by the university in the months leading up to his death, and that he had been placed on performance review.”
Having had cause to report before on bullying at Imperial’s Department of Medicine, I was curious to know more.
Martin Wilkins wrote to Grimm on 10 March 2014. The full text is on THE.
"I am of the opinion that you are struggling to fulfil the metrics of a Professorial post at Imperial College which include maintaining established funding in a programme of research with an attributable share of research spend of £200k p.a and must now start to give serious consideration as to whether you are performing at the expected level of a Professor at Imperial College."
"Please be aware that this constitutes the start of informal action in relation to your performance, however should you fail to meet the objective outlined, I will need to consider your performance in accordance with the formal College procedure for managing issues of poor performance (Ordinance D8) which can be found at the following link.
http://www3.imperial.ac.uk/secretariat/collegegovernance/provisions/ordinances/d8"
[The link to ordinances in this letter doesn’t work now. But you can still read them here (click on the + sign).]
It didn’t take long to get hold of an email from Grimm that has been widely circulated within Imperial. The mail is dated a month after his death. It isn’t known whether it was pre-set by Grimm himself or whether it was sent by someone else. It’s even possible that it wasn’t written by Grimm himself, though if it is an accurate description of what happened, that’s not crucial.
No doubt any Imperial staff member would be in great danger if they were to publish the mail. So, as a public service, I shall do so.
The email from Stefan Grimm, below, was prefaced by an explanation written by the person who forwarded it (I don’t know who that was).
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Dear Colleagues,
You may have already heard about the tragic death of Professor Stefan Grimm a former member of the Faculty of Medicine at Imperial College. He died suddenly and unexpectedly in early October. As yet there is no report about the cause of his death. Some two weeks later a delayed email from him was received by many of the senior staff of the medical school, and other researchers worldwide. It has been forwarded to me by one of my research collaborators. From my reading of it I believe that Stefan wanted it circulated as widely as possible and for that reason I am sending it to you. It is appended below. This email represents just one side of an acrimonious dispute, but it may be indicative of more deep seated problems. best wishes Begin forwarded message: From: Stefan Grimm <professorstefangrimm@gmail.com> Date: 21 October 2014 23:41:03 BST To: <big-email-list> Subject: How Professors are treated at Imperial College Dear all, If anyone is interested how Professors are treated at Imperial College: Here is my story. On May 30th ’13 my boss, Prof Martin Wilkins, came into my office together with his PA and ask me what grants I had. After I enumerated them I was told that this was not enough and that I had to leave the College within one year – “max” as he said. He made it clear that he was acting on behalf of Prof Gavin Screaton, the then head of the Department of Medicine, and told me that I would have a meeting with him soon to be sacked. Without any further comment he left my office. It was only then that I realized that he did not even have the courtesy to close the door of my office when he delivered this message. When I turned around the corner I saw a student who seems to have overheard the conversation looking at me in utter horror. Prof Wilkins had nothing better to do than immediately inform my colleagues in the Section that he had just sacked me. Why does a Professor have to be treated like that? All my grant writing stopped afterwards, as I was waiting for the meeting to get sacked by Prof Screaton. This meeting, however, never took place. In March ’14 I then received the ultimatum email below. 200,000 pounds research income every year is required. Very interesting. I was never informed about this before and cannot remember that this is part of my contract with the College. Especially interesting is the fact that the required 200,000.- pounds could potentially also be covered by smaller grants but in my case a programme grant was expected. Our 135,000.- pounds from the University of Dammam? Doesn’t count. I have to say that it was a lovely situation to submit grant applications for your own survival with such a deadline. We all know what a lottery grant applications are. There was talk that the Department had accepted to be in dept for some time and would compensate this through more teaching. So I thought that I would survive. But the email below indicates otherwise. I got this after the student for whom I “have plans” received the official admission to the College as a PhD student. He waited so long to work in our group and I will never be able to tell him that this should now not happen. What these guys don’t know is that they destroy lives. Well, they certainly destroyed mine. The reality is that these career scientists up in the hierarchy of this organization only look at figures to judge their colleagues, be it impact factors or grant income. After all, how can you convince your Department head that you are working on something exciting if he not even attends the regular Departmental seminars? The aim is only to keep up the finances of their Departments for their own career advancement. These formidable leaders are playing an interesting game: They hire scientists from other countries to submit the work that they did abroad under completely different conditions for the Research Assessment that is supposed to gauge the performance of British universities. Afterwards they leave them alone to either perform with grants or being kicked out. Even if your work is submitted to this Research Assessment and brings in money for the university, you are targeted if your grant income is deemed insufficient. Those submitted to the research assessment hence support those colleagues who are unproductive but have grants. Grant income is all that counts here, not scientific output. We had four papers with original data this year so far, in Cell Death and Differentiation, Oncogene, Journal of Cell Science and, as I informed Prof Wilkins this week, one accepted with the EMBO Journal. I was also the editor of a book and wrote two reviews. Doesn’t count. This leads to a interesting spin to the old saying “publish or perish”. Here it is “publish and perish”. Did I regret coming to this place? I enormously enjoyed interacting with my science colleagues here, but like many of them, I fell into the trap of confusing the reputation of science here with the present reality. This is not a university anymore but a business with very few up in the hierarchy, like our formidable duo, profiteering and the rest of us are milked for money, be it professors for their grant income or students who pay 100.- pounds just to extend their write-up status. If anyone believes that I feel what my excellent coworkers and I have accomplished here over the years is inferior to other work, is wrong. With our apoptosis genes and the concept of Anticancer Genes we have developed something that is probably much more exciting than most other projects, including those that are heavily supported by grants. Was I perhaps too lazy? My boss smugly told me that I was actually the one professor on the whole campus who had submitted the highest number of grant applications. Well, they were probably simply not good enough. I am by far not the only one who is targeted by those formidable guys. These colleagues only keep quiet out of shame about their situation. Which is wrong. As we all know hitting the sweet spot in bioscience is simply a matter of luck, both for grant applications and publications. Why does a Professor have to be treated like that? One of my colleagues here at the College whom I told my story looked at me, there was a silence, and then said: “Yes, they treat us like sh*t”. Best regards, Stefan Grimm |
There is now a way for staff to register their opinions of their employers.The entries for Imperial College on Glassdoor.com suggest that bullying there is widespread (on contrast, the grumbles about UCL are mostly about lack of space).
Googling ‘imperial college employment tribunal’ shows a history of bullying that is not publicised. In fact victims are often forced to sign gagging clauses. In fairness, AcademicFOI.com shows that the problems are not unique to Imperial. Over 3 years (it isn’t clear which years) , 810 university staff went to employment tribunals. And 5528 staff were gagged. Not a proud record
Imperial’s Department of Medicine web site says that one of its aims is to “build a strong and supportive academic community”. Imperial’s spokesman said “Stefan Grimm was a valued member of the Faculty of Medicine”.
The ability of large organisations to tell barefaced lies never ceases to amaze me.
I asked Martin Wilkins to comment on the email from Grimm. His response is the standard stuff that HR issues on such occasions. Not a word of apology, no admission of fault. It says “Imperial College London seeks to give every member of its community the opportunity to excel and to create a supportive environment in which their careers may flourish.”. Unless, that is, your research is insufficiently expensive, in which case we’ll throw you out on the street at 51. For completeness, you can download Wilkins’ mail.
After reading this post, Martin Wilkins wrote again to me (12.21 on 2nd December), He said
“You will appreciate that I am unable to engage in any further discussion – not because of any institutional policy but because there is an ongoing inquest into the circumstances of his death. What I can say is that there was no ongoing correspondence. We met from time to time to discuss science and general matters. These meetings were always cordial. My last meeting with him was to congratulate him on his recent paper, accepted by EMBOL "
The emails now revealed show that the relationship could hardly have been less “cordial”. Martin Wilkins appears to be less than frank about what happened.
If anyone has more correspondence which ought to be known, please send it to me. I don’t reveal sources (if you prefer, use my non-College email david.colquhoun72 (at) gmail.com).
The problem is by no means limited to Imperial. Neither is it universal at Imperial: some departments are quite happy about how they are run. Kings College London, Warwick University and Queen Mary College London have been just as brutal as Imperial. But in these places nobody has died. Not yet.
Follow-up
Here are a few of the tweets that appeared soon after this post appeared.
OMG. If you are an academic at a UK uni read this. Saddest thing I’ve read. Both for the individual and us all. http://t.co/g8xlQbLvDD
— GaryFoster (@Prof_GD_Foster) December 1, 2014
Utterly tragic consequences of running a University Department as a business, via @david_colquhoun. #UofABudgetModel http://t.co/Ql2AJcQqWR
— Dr. Andy Holt (@DrAndyHolt) December 1, 2014
Accusation of a culture of bullying at Imperial from Stefan Grimm, written just before he died. http://t.co/NeXysWFjZM
— Suzi Gage (@soozaphone) December 1, 2014
Bastards “@david_colquhoun: Publish *and* perish at Imperial College: the last email of Stefan Grimm http://t.co/DcQQlfwf78 #bullying”
— John Canning (@johngcanning) December 1, 2014
@david_colquhoun thank you for publishing this. Tragic.
— Melanie Byng (@ThetisMercurio) December 1, 2014
Good grief. This is what happens when science is run like a business http://t.co/3eArX3pRPz (via @david_colquhoun)
— Stephan Neuhaus (@stephanneuhaus1) December 1, 2014
Having worked at Imperial as a PostDoc, I recognise the vile atmosphere portrayed here (via @david_colquhoun). http://t.co/7ogAekAcLR
— Michel Valstar (@MichelValstar) December 1, 2014
Haunting stuff. @david_colquhoun writes of a tragic death and potential case of bullying at #Imperial College London http://t.co/uicA2wPE7S
— Michael Head (@michaelghead) December 1, 2014
@Cesar_F1000 @david_colquhoun Not the kind of "life of the mind" that anyone would want. Can Academia ever be reformed?
— Eric Kansa (@ekansa) December 1, 2014
@david_colquhoun @AMCELL Thank you. This is like something out of Terminator: the rise of the (administrator) machines.
— Dawn Bazely (@dawnbazely) December 1, 2014
@david_colquhoun @timeshighered @ChrisParrTHE "review" by Director of HR? Wonder if they'll find any fault with HR processes?
— calloutloud (@blowthatwhistl1) December 2, 2014
@david_colquhoun @timeshighered @ChrisParrTHE Stefan Grimm case order up a lorry load of whitewash for delivery to @imperialcollege DofHR
— calloutloud (@blowthatwhistl1) December 2, 2014
Shame on my old Uni for this! @david_colquhoun Publish and perish at @imperialcollege: the death of Stefan Grimm http://t.co/l0LZf8u8BX
— Scott Edmunds (@SCEdmunds) December 2, 2014
I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness. @imperialcollege chews up profs. http://t.co/8ibqkk9fjJ @david_colquhoun
— Robert Davidson (@bobbledavidson) December 2, 2014
Saddest blog post I've read for ages: about the pressure on high performing academics by @david_colquhoun http://t.co/gH95I1bMCa
— Mark Brandon (@icey_mark) December 2, 2014
This breaks my heart @david_colquhoun Publish *and* perish at Imperial College London: last email of Stefan Grimm http://t.co/mUsEiM6OJU
— Sylvia McLain (@girlinterruptin) December 2, 2014
"Not a university but a business": Publish AND perish | http://t.co/6aOU6j9CRS | Via @david_colquhoun | Tragic, shameful, urgent
— Tom Farsides (@TomFarsides) December 2, 2014
3 December 2014
The day after this post went public, I wrote to the vice-chancellor of Imperial College, thus.
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To: alice.gast@imperial.ac.uk cc: w.j.stirling@imperial.ac.uk, s.johal@imperial.ac.uk. d.humphris@imperial.ac.uk Dear Professor Gast You may be aware that last night, at 18.30, I published Stefan Grimm’s last email, see https://www.dcscience.net/?p=6834 In the 12 hours that it’s been public it’s had at least 10,000 views. At the moment, 230 people. from all round the world, are reading it. It seems to be going viral. I appreciate that you are new to the job of rector, so you may not realise that this sort of behaviour has been going on for years at Imperial (especially in Medicine) -I last wrote about the dimwitted methods being used to assess people in Medicine on 2007 -see https://www.dcscience.net/?p=182 Now it seems likely that the policy has actually killed someone (itwas quite predictable that this would happen, sooner or later). I hope that your your humanity will ensure a change of policy in your approach to “performance management”. Failing that, the bad publicity that you’re getting may be enough to persuade you to do so. Best regards David Colquhoun __________________________________ |
Today I updated the numbers: 44,000 hits after 36 hours.
I tried to put it politely, but I have not yet had a reply.
4 December 2014
More than one source at Imperial has sent me a copy of an email sent to staff by the dean of the Faculty of Medicine. It’s dated 03 December 2014 16:44. It was sent almost 24 hours after my post. It is, I suppose, just possible that Kelleher was unaware of my post. But he must surely have seen the internally-circulated version of Grimm’s letter. It isn’t mentioned: that makes the weasel words and crocodile tears in the email even more revolting than they otherwise would be. Both his account and Wilkins’ account contradict directly the account in Grimm’s mail.
Somebody is not telling the truth.
This post has broken all records (for this blog). It has been viewed over 50,000 times in 48 hours. It is still getting 35-40 visitors per minute, as it has for the last 2 days. How much longer will managers at Imperial be able to pretend that the cat hasn’t escaped from the bag?
5 December 2014
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Late last night. Imperial made, at last. a public comment on the death of Stefan Grimm: Statement on Professor Stefan Grimm by Caroline Davis (Communications and Public Affairs). This bit of shameless public relations appears under a tasteful picture of lilies. |
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It says “Members of Imperial’s community may be aware of media reports of the tragic loss of Stefan Grimm, professor of toxicology in the Faculty of Medicine”. They could hardly have missed the reports. As of 07.25 this morning, this post alone has been viewed 97,626 times, from all over the world. The statement is a masterpiece of weasel words, crocodile tears and straw man arguments. “Contrary to claims appearing on the internet, Professor Grimm’s work was not under formal review nor had he been given any notice of dismissal”. I saw no allegations that he had actually been fired. He was undoubtedly threatened with being fired. That’s entirely obvious from the email sent by Martin Wilkins to Stefan Grimm. on 10 March. The full text of that mail was published yesterday in Times Higher Education.
It’s worth reproducing the full text of that mail. To write like that to a successful professor, aged 51, is simply cruel. It is obviously incompatible with the PR guff that was issued yesterday. It seems to me to be very silly of Imperial College to try to deny the obvious.
I don’t know how people like Martin Wilkins and Caroline Davis manage to sleep at night.
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Date: 10 March 2014 Dear Stefan I am writing following our recent meetings in which we discussed your current grant support and the prospects for the immediate future. The last was our discussion around your PRDP, which I have attached. As we discussed, any significant external funding you had has now ended. I know that you have been seeking further funding support with Charities such as CRUK and the EU commission but my concern is that despite submitting many grants, you have been unsuccessful in persuading peer-review panels that you have a competitive application. Your dedication to seek funding is not in doubt but as time goes by, this can risk becoming a difficult situation from which to extricate oneself. In other words, grant committees can become fatigued from seeing a series of unsuccessful applications from the same applicant. I am of the opinion that you are struggling to fulfil the metrics of a Professorial post at Imperial College which include maintaining established funding in a programme of research with an attributable share of research spend of £200k p.a and must now start to give serious consideration as to whether you are performing at the expected level of a Professor at Imperial College. Over the course of the next 12 months I expect you to apply and be awarded a programme grant as lead PI. This is the objective that you will need to achieve in order for your performance to be considered at an acceptable standard. I am committed to doing what I can to help you succeed and will meet with you monthly to discuss your progression and success in achieving the objective outlined. You have previously initiated discussions in our meetings regarding opportunities outside of Imperial College and I know you have been exploring opportunities elsewhere. Should this be the direction you wish to pursue, then I will do what I can to help you succeed. Please be aware that this constitutes the start of informal action in relation to your performance, however should you fail to meet the objective outlined, I will need to consider your performance in accordance with the formal College procedure for managing issues of poor performance (Ordinance D8) which can be found at the following link. Should you have any questions on the above, please do get in touch. Best wishes Martin |
These fixed performance targets are simply absurd. It’s called "research" because you don’t know how ir will come out. I’m told that if you apply for an Academic Clinical Fellowship at Imperial you are told
“Objectives and targets: The goal would be to impart sufficient training in the chosen subspecialty, as to enable the candidate to enter a MD/PhD programme at the end of the fellowship. During the entire academic training programme, the candidate is expected to publish at least five research articles in peer-reviewed journals of impact factor greater than 4.”
That’s a recipe for short term, unoriginal research. It’s an incentive to cut corners. Knowing that a paper has been written under that sort of pressure makes me less inclined to believe that the work has been done thoroughly. It is a prostitution of science.
Later on 5 December. This post has now had 100,000 views in a bit less that four days. At 13.30, I was at Kings College London, to talk to medical students about quackery etc. They were a smart lot, but all the questions were about Stefan Grimm.
The national press have begun to notice the tragedy. The Daily Mail, of all "newspapers" has a fair account of the death. It quotes Professor James Stirling, Provost of Imperial College London, as intoning the standard mantra:
“Imperial seeks to give every member of its community the opportunity to excel and to create a supportive environment in which their careers may flourish. Where we become aware that the College is falling short of this standard of support to its members, we will act”.
In my opinion the email above shows this is simply untrue. This sort of absurd and counterproductive pressure has been the rule in the Department of Medicine for years. I can’t believe that James Stirling didn’t now about it. If he did know, he should be fired for not anticipating the inevitable tragic consequences of his policies. If he didn’t know what was going on, he should be fired for not knowing. .
It is simply absurd for Imperial to allow (In)human resources to investigate itself. Nobody will believe the result.
An independent external inquiry is needed. Soon.
Stefan Grimm’s death is, ultimately, the fault of the use of silly metrics to mismeasure people. If there were no impact factors, no REF, no absurd university rankings, and no ill-educated senior academics and HR people who take them seriously, he’d probably still be alive.
8 December 2014
After one week, I wrote again to the senior management at Imperial (despite the fact that my earlier letters had been ignored). This time I had one simple suggestion. If Imperial want genuinely to set things right they should get an independent external inquiry. Their present proposal that the people who let things go so far should investigate themselves has been greeted with the scepticism that it so richly deserves. I still live in hope that someone will be sufficiently courteous to answer this time.
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To: alice.gast@imperial.ac.uk cc: w.j.stirling@imperial.ac.uk, s.johal@imperial.ac.uk. d.humphris@imperial.ac.uk, d.kelleher@imperial.ac.uk Dear Professor Gast My post of Stefan Grimm’s email last Monday evening, has been viewed 130,000 times from at least 175 different countries. Your failure to respond to my letters is public knowledge. When you finally posted a statement about Grimm on Thursday it so obviously contradicted the emails which I, and Times Higher Education had already published, that it must have done your reputation more harm than good. May I suggest that the best chance to salvage your reputation would be to arrange for an independent external inquiry into the policies that contributed to Grimm’s death. You must surely realise that your announcement that HR will investigate its own policies has been greeted with universal scepticism. Rightly or wrongly, its conclusions will simply not be believed. I believe that an external inquiry would show Imperial is genuine in wishing to find out how to improve the way it treats the academics who are responsible for its reputation. Best regards David Colquhoun __________________________________ |
Here is a map of the location of 200 hits on 4 December (one of 20 such maps in a 4 hour period).
10 December 2014
Eventually I got a reply, of sorts, from Dermot Kelleher. It’s in the style of the true apparatchik "shut up and go away".
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Dear Dr Colquhoun
Many thanks for your enquiry. Can I just say that College will liaise with the Coroner as required on this issue. In light of this, I do not believe that further correspondence will be helpful at present.
Best wishes
Dermot
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51 Responses to Publish and perish at Imperial College London: the death of Stefan Grimm
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[…] David Colquhoun, “Publish and Perish”. […]
Interesting £200,000 a year for a professor, that’s the same as the number that KCL came up with in the “summer of sackings”. Looks like a Russell Group get together at the top level?
Scientific success = research output / grant income
Scientific success ≠ research output * grant income
Grant income is usually necessary for scientific research, but ultimately it is a measure of how much we are a drain of society, not a measure of our value to society (or science).
Can you imagine the government tracking down those who claim the most state benefits and rewarding them with more state benefits? (Actually, they do do that with bankers, but that’s another story).
The problem here is that universities are rewarded too much for grant income, when they should be rewarded more for research output. Research would be less wasteful; society and government would get a better deal on the research they fund; good universities would get a better deal in the long run; and universities wouldn’t end up sacking good researchers who don’t like gambling too much of their time on the horrendously stochastic grant application process.
I don’t believe that universities can change this business model on the own. Its the government that needs to make changes; reward output, not input!
I know judging research output is difficult, and metrics alone are not sufficient (and easily manipulated), but it would be difficult to come up with a scheme that was any worse that the grant review process. So much time wasted that could have been spent doing useful research.
Regarding the tragic death of Stefan Grimm; it makes me sad, but more importantly, it makes me angry!
Scientific success = research output / grant income
Stefan Grimm = highly successful scientist, R.I.P
[…] additional coverage of the situation. One of Grimm’s peers, David Colquhoun, author of “Publish and perish at Imperial College London: the death of Stefan Grimm”, explains that Grimm had a good publishing record (73 peer-reviewed publications by the age of […]
Thank you for publishing this. I miss in your article about Prof. Grimm a comment about post-docs, PhD students, all the people further down in the hierarchy. I assume Prof Grimm’s situations clearly stands out in the world of professors and it seems impossible that nowadays also professors are treated like s**t as quoted.
However, a life is a life. The mentioned pressure is sent downstream to any PhD student, maybe even to Master student including Post-docs, too.
It destroys many lives in various aspects, often maybe not as obvious as in the case of Prof Grimm’s life. Maybe this fact goes unnoticed be the shear number of PhD students, Master students, Post-docs, but a life is a life.
[…] Colquhoun writes in his blog of Stefan Grimm, a professor at Imperial College London who died in September. There is now an […]
Not only Medicine. I don’t even work there, my girlfriend does. Nevertheless, I’m a Lawyer and felt extremely uncomfortable with some of the stories she tells me. Not directed to her, I wouldn’t allow that but to direct colleagues. If Imperial was a private organization, this various cases would already be in court, undoubtedly with big losses. Seeing this from so many different departments, from students to PIs and higher, only proves that there is a widespread culture of bullying in Imperial and this is a huge class action waiting to happen. When I mean class action, I’m talking hundreds of millions. Really. The impact of that loss would be devastating
justme, you are correct that there is a need for a coordinated legal response to these issues, and not only with regard to imperial. sadly ucu often seems to overlook the power of law and individual cases are dealt with piecemeal or settled through negotiations and not made public. i have also seen a comment on another site that the legal position is moot because universities will go ahead and sack staff anyway – a sorry state for public institutions to have arrived at as a result of the ref, if true. but as you suggest, large damages claims and coordinated action would be likely to have some impact, both on universities and in the media. moreover, there is a symbolic value in invoking the law in response to unjust treatment involving retrospective and unilateral attempts at changes to academic staff terms and conditions, or bullying. this blog has struck a chord because so many academics across the uk recognise the truth of it. the tragedy of stefan grimm’s death shows that there is a dire need for academics to mobilise, but there is also fear. i hope his family will seek legal advice from a good human rights law firm, but ucu needs to do the same on behalf of the wider academic community. i am sure good human rights lawyers would do the work pro bono, but a fighting fund could also be established if necessary.
i hope too that a fund can be set up for donations for stefan’s family to use in whatever way meets their needs. it will be an act of solidarity, even though it can never replace their cruel loss.
I’m not persuaded this is about scientific success, or not altogether. This or a variant of it is becoming fairly widespread, with varying degrees of aggressiveness in how it is pursued. The key here is FEC: the huge sums which accrue to universities as a result of RCUK funding. Universities have now built these profits into their budgets. The cost of research is thereby grotesquely inflated, result: much less is actually achieved, overall, for a given sum at the disposal of a research council. It would be interesting a) to have a picture across the sector of practices regarding this new “metric” of success; b) to know to what extent this started off with FEC.
[…] In case you have missed it, you can read the whole sad story at DC’ science: Publish and perish at Imperial College London: the death of Stefan Grimm. […]
[…] the most moving pieces in that regard was an an email that appears to have been sent by Prof. Grimm himself, offering his […]
A professor of psychiatry at Imperial I work with who brings in a huge amount of research funding said <<Yes – very sad.
In the UK the professions with the highest suicide rates are healthcare and sales related jobs. Academic medicine is now practised as a combination of the two and colleagues are given explicit messages about the targets they have to achieve to keep their jobs.
But doctors and academics are also notoriously poor at asking for help and support from colleagues and we need to get better at looking out for each other.>>
@flemonsky
I hope that the professor of psychiatry at Imperial is doing a bit more than saying “very sad”. He/she should be using every ounce of their influence to stop the Dean of Medicine’s appallingly inhuman behaviour.
*I know he is part of a team that do offer confidential counselling to staff but I don’t know how much he actually does to stop this. I think it’s very hard in this bullying culture.
Terrible news, and indeed not surprising for anyone who knows how Imperial machine functions. It is evident that many people at Imperial suffer from the attitude that drove Prof. Grimm over the edge. It is also understandable that anyone bullied and at Imperial feels alone and unsure about going public, but we must find a way to get together to avoid further disasters! The problem of vile and not research friendly atmosphere is not only an issue of Medicine Department.
[…] more on the background of this story at the blog by David Colquhoun, emeritus professor of pharmacology at University College […]
[…] http://www.dcscience.net/2014/12/01/publish-and-perish-at-imperial-college-london-the-death-of-stefa… […]
[…] Publish and perish at Imperial College London: the death of Stefan Grimm […]
[…] Why are your statistical models more complex these days? How The Plague Microbe Gave Fleas A Chance Publish and perish at Imperial College London: the death of Stefan Grimm Where to submit your paper. Or “If at first you don’t succeed, fail fail again … then try […]
[…] 伦敦帝国学院医学院毒理学教授Stefan Grimm今年10月自杀，大约数周之后，他的一封延迟发送的电子邮件群发给了同事和世界其他地方的同行。邮件的主题是“伦敦帝国学院如何对待教授”。据说他今年收到最后通牒，由于年科研经费到账少于20万英镑，所以他将被辞退。Grimm教授无法忍受这样的侮辱，于是选择了自杀。 […]
[…] Imperial College London is reviewing its procedures following the death of one of its faculty. David Colquhoun has more details, including the last email the professor sent. […]
Mark Thomas says that “Its the government that needs to make changes; reward output, not input!”. Just over four years ago when the Comprehensive Spending Review established the Research Council budget freeze (which has led to appalling erosion for science funding in real terms), Vince Cable made a speech in which he urged universities to ‘do more with less’. It seems that Stefan Grimm had done just that – a substantial number of high quality publications, though apparently on a budget deemed by Imperial to be insufficient. In times of extremely limited resources universities should heed their paymasters, and do as Thomas suggests, reward academics for outputs.
[…] scuola di medicina dell'Imperial College di Londra, la valutazione "a peso" di un prof ha conseguenze drammatiche e il dip. Risorse Umane che dovrebbe indagarle nega […]
*Mark Thomas says that “Its the government that needs to make changes; reward output, not input!”. Just over four years ago when the Comprehensive Spending Review established the Research Council budget freeze (which has led to appalling erosion for science funding in real terms), Vince Cable made a speech in which he urged universities to ‘do more with less’.
It seems that Stefan Grimm had done just that – a substantial number of high quality publications, though apparently on a budget deemed by Imperial to be insufficient. In times of extremely limited resources universities should heed their paymasters, and do as Thomas suggests, reward academics for outputs.
[…] Publish and perish at Imperial College London […]
[…] his blog, Professor David Colquhoun, FRS reports on the case of Professor Stefan Grimm of Imperial College […]
[…] is, like Kingston, a university with a reputation for bullying . This desperate incident should leave no one in any doubt of the serious consequences of the […]
*I agree with the ‘output’ solution to the publish and perish culture that has arisen over the last few decades in universities in the UK and abroad. The question is how do we change the culture? Whilst blogs are great for starting a discussion at some point academics are going to have to face the problem of how to initiate a change in culture. It certainly is not going to come from the top. I don’t see any other way than collective action, something we are all a bit crap at. However, if we ever do bite that bullet my suggestion for collective action is to boycott peer reviews of grants.
*It is a shame that HEFCE’s consultation on the use of metrics to measure research quality has closed, but it is still being considered, and I’d have thought this tragic event may be relevant to their decision. It demonstrates where an overdependence on metrics can lead. It would be interesting to lay it before them and invite their comments.
It is a shame that HEFCE’s consultation on the use of metrics to measure research quality has finished, though the conclusions remain to be reached. I should have thought this tragedy was relevant to that as a warning of the uncritical use of metrics, and it would be interesting to lay this before HEFCE and invite their comments.
@GrahamBrack
The formal consultation may be ended, but two members of the group just favourited by tweet about your comment. They are certainly aware of the case.
@GrahamBrack
The formal consultation may be over, but two members of the metrics group just favourited my tweet that linked to your comment.
I am delighted to hear it. Let us hope they are vocal and convince their colleagues.
The way in which staff are treated ought to weigh in decisions about funding.
[…] Publish and perish at Imperial College London: the death of Stefan Grimm. Jump to follow-up Now Stefan Grimm is dead. […]
[…] metrics – Oh god. And how. How many people need to die or leave HE before this stops? I guess the REF results next […]
[…] College professor Stegan Grimm ‘was given grant income target’. (Times Higher Education) Publish and perish at Imperial College: the death of Stefan Grimm. (DCScience) Stressful Systems: How one UK professor’s death has sparked a wider […]
[…] Publish and perish at Imperial College London: the death of Stefan Grimm (UK) […]
[…] sangat takut kehilangan pekerjaannya hanya karena jumlah hibah yang tidak mencapai target tertentu. Keluhan-keluhan Stefan Grimm bahkan sempat terekam dalam email yang dikirimkan ke banyak […]
[…] Publish and perish at Imperial College London: the death of Stefan Grimm […]
[…] Misschien nog aangrijpender (en triest in tegenstelling met de vorige link) is dit verhaal over Publ…. […]
[…] Included with Grimm’s message were two emails sent to Grimm by Martin Wilkins, professor of clinical pharmacology and head of the division of experimental medicine at Imperial. All these emails have subsequently been leaked and have now become public knowledge; the Times Higher Education has published them in full alongside an article on Grimm’s death. There has also been extensive commentary in other publications as well as on blogs (notably by David Colquhoun, emeritus professor of pharmacology at University College London). […]
[…] If we have to monitor research quality, let us stick with peer review. Let us accept that REF distorts the very thing it seeks to measure, but let us turn that to our advantage. REF can be used as a driver not only for research quality but also for the conditions to enable top-quality research to thrive. In recent years these have become so severely distorted as to be damaging not only to science but to scientists themselves in the new metrics-driven culture of publish and perish. […]
[…] I first heard about recent events at Imperial and Warwick via David Colquhoun’s excellent posts on his web site. It is worth reading the post and comments in full, but essentially is appears […]
[…] recall that there have been a bunch of articles over the last few months about depression and the effects of stress on academics, etc. Lots of my acquaintance have linked to these pieces and more. Ironically, perhaps, but not […]
[…] ← Publish and perish at Imperial College London: the death of Stefan Grimm […]
[…] tragedy of the apparent suicide of Stefan Grimm is now known worldwide. His last email has been read by more than 160,000 people from over 200 countries. This post gathers together some […]
[…] Last year, professor Stefan Grimm committed suicide after his employer, Imperial College London told him he had 12 months to pull in 200,000 Pounds in research funding or be […]
[…] If the REF has helped senior people see the benefits of the slow and careful method (which is also “the scientific method”) then that’s a good thing. It is the first sign that the tide might turn on the “Publish or Perish” culture that has developed over the last 20 years. It hasn’t turned yet, of course, as the tragic case of Stefan Grimm demonstrates. […]
[…] A particularly harrowing consequence of the commodification of universities in todays climate is emphasised in Loss of a colleague. Posted on 6 October 2014, the writer explained that a support technician for Kingston University died of a heart attack. Only in his early fifties, he was under a lot of stress at the university as well as worrying about the job re-application process. There was an even more disturbing case at Imperial College London which can be read here. […]
[…] last email of Stefan Grimm, and its follow-up post, has been read over 195,000 times […]
[…] Selectie. Online onderwijs. Kwaliteit in verscheidenheid. Langstudeerboete. Wetenschappelijke integriteit. Rendementsdenken. Publish and perish at Imperial College London: the death of Stefan Grimm. […]