Former Aussie Prime Minister: Sacking Peter Ridd Was an Attack on Science

Don Aitken wrote today in The Australian:
Don’t you dare upset the money-making engine
Peter Ridd, who was sacked last week by James Cook University, is a well-published professor in coastal oceanography, reef systems and peer review, and a former head of JCU’s school of physics.
When he drew attention to what he saw as exaggerations in the way fellow academics at his university were describing the condition of the Great Barrier Reef, he was “disciplined” by JCU and was told that if he did it again, he would be charged with serious misconduct. He wrote to me about this matter, and that email was seen by the university to be a further sign of misconduct.
Ridd decided he had enough and launched a legal suit against the university, claiming senior staff had been biased and had not acted fairly or in good faith.
Ridd has now been fired. Not many professors in Australian universities have ever been fired, and sacking should require some extraordinary misbehaviour on the part of the professor.
Ridd is not accepting his dismissal quietly and has raised a good deal of money very quickly through crowd-funding. There is going to be a court case.
This is a sad event in Australian higher education, for all sorts of reasons, and at its heart is the working of a new engine in ­academe.
In 1990, I gave an address in England, subsequently reprinted in Britain and Australia, deploring the extent to which research had become the be-all and end-all of appointment, promotion and honour in our universities.
That trend has continued, despite the awards for good teaching, which did not exist when I gave that address.
The engine works this way. There is strong pressure on all academics to bring in research grant money for the department, faculty and university. Those who do it well find their careers advancing quickly. To assist them, there are media sections in universities whose job it is to frame the ­research work of academics in a way that will gain the attention of the media.
The staff members also will be aware of the opportunity they have to advance their careers and names through writing another version of their published journal article for The Conversation, an online journal in which academics can write in more accessible language for an inquiring lay readership, and call for the urgent supply of further research money.
The output of the engine is heightened recognition of the name of the university, the academics and their area, and, of course, the likely arrival of more research money. All those in the engine room think they are just doing their jobs.
None of this is much of a problem in the more recondite areas of academic research; string theory in physics, for example, or ­advanced econometrics in the social sciences. But it is a problem, and a rapidly growing one, in areas of research where what is actually the case is contested vigorously by others.
An eye has to be kept on the source of the money, which in our country is the Australian government. In the past 40 years, governments have become interested in universities’ finding academic support for what they are proposing or have in place. We are in an era of policy-based evidence.
Nowhere is tension clearer than in the case of research on the Great Barrier Reef. A bucketload of money has been devoted to the reef, and another $500 million was forecast in the budget. The reef, as is frequently said, is an Australian icon. An icon is a religious object. Ridd is a scientist, not a priest.
To have people such as Ridd decrying the hyperbole with which some research has been couched is obviously to imperil ­future grant money, and it would be understandable if academics within JCU have appealed to their vice-chancellor to shut Ridd up.
Something like this was presumably the reason Bob Carter, an internationally distinguished geologist at JCU who died in 2016, was stripped of his adjunct status (which meant he could not use the university library’s resources, a real penalty). Carter, like Ridd, was concerned to point to the errors of balance and rigour in research and publication on the reef.
There is no likely good outcome from this. Early on, I wrote to the JCU vice-chancellor to suggest she move to settle the issues quickly and away from the court.
JCU’s reputation can only worsen as the trial continues, while Ridd will spend his entire time raising money and defending his position. In the meantime, his students and colleagues have lost a fine teacher and associate. And who is giving attention to the ­engine room?
Don Aitkin is a former vice-chancellor of the University of Canberra and was foundation chairman of the Australian Research Council.