UP YOURS, WOOS!!!

They don’t seem to be merging Depts to larger Depts in this case. More like going to a “single school Faculty”.

Mergers within biosciences have, as RS alludes to, been a widespread practise in the UK Univs over the last 20 yrs, driven largely (though not wholly) by the RAE (Research Assessment Exercise) rankings.

In cases where small Depts do not really provide “critical mass” and are clearly not achieving what they might achieve post-merger / shake-up, one can make a pretty good argument for mergers to bigger units. For a discussion, if anyone’s interested, see:

www.physoc.org/publications/pn/issuepdf/54/3.pdf

However… In cases where all the stand-alone Departments seem to be thriving, with high class research, full degree courses, and a successful and mutually-supportive departmental “culture”, there seems much less rationale for such moves. The suspicion is that the change is primarily to give more power to a central management system.

The loss of a century or more of tradition and identity also saddens me a bit. As a Ph.D. student at UCL a quarter of a century ago I would have happily admitted to being largely indifferent to the history. However, now that I am a middle-aged old fart I see the history of science as being rather important. Apart from informing us about where our disciplines came from, and reminding us that the current battle against unreason has old roots, it is quite comforting to feel one works in some small way within a major human undertaking, past and present. (DC has a rather good quote from Gandhi on his blog:
“Almost everything you do will be insignificant, but it is important that you do it.”)

Finally, one would have thought this kind of history of disciplines and departments actually confers some of the “brand identity” which Univs care so much about these days. But then I’m not a University manager.

However, it is NOT possible to have a sensible argument with many (though not all) CAM practitioners.

“Offense is what people take when they can’t take argument”

It strikes me that alternative medicine responds in the same way. Instead of engaging in debate, sceptics are told we ‘hate’ and and ‘insulting’ and so on. (Maybe we are and maybe we do.) But, just as I have not heard any real religious engagement with the ideas in RD’s God Delusion, it is rare to come across alties real engagement with people like Colquhoun et al.

The difference is though that with alternative medicine there is money behind the beliefs, and so in taking offense there is the option and sometimes ‘necessity’ of legal redress.

I’d just like to thank everyone for their enormous support, especially Ben of course.

Oddly enough, the web site palaver has been just a distraction. A more important matter (for me) at UCL has just been lost. There is no longer a Department of Pharmacology. I do hope this is not a step in the direction of the corporatisation of universities that we’ve seen elswhere www.goodscience.org.uk

Ben, with you on the praise for UCL in general, altho i declare a COI – studied there for degree, did PhD, still here as a post-doc – institutionalised or what…?! (DrM, a better medical school in London…?! surely not?! )

the right decision’s been made, and to be honest i can definitely see the whole legal threats approah backfiring too – doesnt exactly exude confidence in your own woo theories if at any mention of “show me the evidence” folks like Lakin and Walker resort to bitter litigation…

Cyanide, eh?

In your face woos…

“… appear to have perfectly respectable academic credentials, so why woo……..?”

Since when did having the “respectable academic credentials” translate into being respectable in general or with regard to integrity or morality, or whatever?
“Every man has his price”, is a saying I believe that refers to the monetary level at which principles, no matter how deeply held, and irrespective of academic credentials, become overwhelmingly inconvenient and are automatically jettisoned.