Shaming and Naming

Varia: In relation to my last post, I was very flattered to see that former Belgian Prime Minister Guy Verhofstadt is clearly a devoted post-europe reader! While it’s often said that the problem with liberals is that they are hard to find, Verhofstadt may be pretty close to the real thing. He has thoughtfully responded to my post [...]

Basic Research at Risk

Here is a good article from the Times Literary Supplement explaining the new plan in the UK to asses scientific research and allocate funding partly (25% is the proposed weighting) on the basis of the “impact” the research or the department has outside of academia. “Outside academia” seems to have only three aspects according to [...]

Crisis in Czech research funding

There is a big crisis going on at the moment regarding the funding of scientific research in the Czech Republic. According to the Czech Academy of Science, new policy on how funding will be allocated threatens the existence of fundamental or basic research in the Czech Republic.