14 novembre 2013
Research needs more poetry, not more cash
By Gary Thomas. ‘Big money’ grants foster ‘bookkeeping’ work at the expense of small-scale but potentially groundbreaking efforts, says Gary Thomas.
Dwight D. Eisenhower took up a good proportion of his farewell address to the American nation in 1961 worrying about universities. The departing president said that the university was “historically the fountainhead of free ideas and scientific discovery”. His big regret, however, was that money, not discovery, had become the principal target for staff at universities. A government contract had become “a substitute for intellectual curiosity”. More...
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