Stefan Grimm death prompts questions for Imperial president

What did she say? Nothing.

An opportunity lost! However, Professor Gast did make the well founded comment that UK research is underwritten to a large extent by the government (using public money). There is an expectation therefore that research environments are supportive of the academics that win that funding. This is where we can start to enforce healthy management cultures in British academia - and it shouldn't be difficult. Why don't we start by reporting on our work environments (confidentially) in feedback (interim/final reports) to government funded research councils. Individual universities would then be tasked with improving their performance if they accumulated too many "negative hits". Likewise, days sickness and unusually high staff turnover can indicate dysfunctional management. I suspect that universities try to paper over spikes in those data by benchmarking. The natural outcome of this is a mind set that can quite possibly ignore pathologic work environments by deciding that those are the norm. The need for the public or staff to resort to FOI and data protection requests may also provide a useful dataset, and one we should have full access to. At present these data are partially held by the charity Jisc (jisc.ac.uk). I say partially as I am informed by Jisc that data submission is not mandatory; some universities submit data under a numerical pseudonym rather than be identifiable. Universities will only sort themselves out when forced to. That means tying the stick to funding. Given the will, and a few extra check boxes on an e-filable form, how hard is that????

In his heartbreaking email Stefan Grimm had the following statement: "...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 ..." Poor Stefan, little did you know. Listen to the words of your President: "Professors are really like small business owners" Oh really? O tempora o mores!

Quo usque tandem abutere, Alicia, patientia nostra? Quam diu etiam furor iste tuus nos eludet? Quem ad finem sese effrenata iactabit audacia? ...

Equating the largest research grant with the very best science is to seriously mistake inputs for outputs. It would be akin to awarding The Derby to the horse that ate the most hay.