“The Nobel Laureate Timeshare”.

As Univs are pressured to have lots of outward signs that they are “world leading”, such as having Nobel Laureates on the staff, one or two bright sparks in Univ senior admin spotted the problem that there simply weren’t enough Laureates to go around. Not to mention their tendency these days to concentrate in a subset of (particular American) big rich research-intensive Univs.

The imaginative solution developed to get around this was the “part time consulting Laureate”. These arrangements stretch from genuine part-time appointments for a certain number of months a year, to essentially honorary appointments which resemble company non-executive directors being supposed to turn up for a few days a year. Although to say this when Prof Bert won’t even be doing the work on their site sets new standards of DoubleSpeak. Well done Ulster!

Anyway, having sealed the deal with your new Laureate, get the University PR dept to issue a hyperbolic press release, conveniently omitting to mention how many days a year of the Great Man or Woman’s you are getting and/or paying for, and your World ClassTMstatus is within touching distance.

Triples and senior management team pay rises all round!

Incidentally, just in case anyone is puzzled by the announcement that Bert Sakmann is moving to the University of Ulster, it should be pointed out that their news item is a piece of world class spin. He’s agreed to advise an ex-student of his, now in Ireland, on a computational project of mutual interest, after his move to Munich.

Congratulations for your article in Physiology News, no. 69, 2007, p. 12 PN Soapbox. I agree with every sentence.

Bert Sakmann

The contemporary German academic system was founded by the brothers von Humboldt about 200 years ago. The idea was very simple but extremely effective: A king (or government) should only find a few outstanding researchers with clean reputation and brilliant records and give them a carte blanche. They, then, will automatically search for other peoples like themselves: intelligent, conscious, talented, unstained and truth-seeking. The only reliable criterion that X is a good scientist is the recommendation of Y and Z who are already known in that they are good scientists. The financial system should correspond to the same principles: From a certain level, a scientist should get enough money to not have to worry about the life’s difficulties; this salary should be independent of his formal performance, otherwise he would think on the formal performance rather than research. Even outstanding achievements should not further improve his financial status; otherwise, he would try to pursue money instead of Truth.

It’s surprising but this simple system did work excellently up to 1933. During Nazi time, politics and ideology intervened the university life so that Jews and left-wing thinking people were replaced by those with ‘national feelings’. The problem was not that the latter were not Jews, or that they were Nazis (in fact, the huge majority of them was NOT), but that they were mediocre.

The German science had not recovered form this first shock when the second one come in 1968. To become a professor, your research abilities was not important that time, but only your political views were. In 1933-1945, the selection criteria were purely white (German) origin, ‘national feelings’, and lack of contacts with Jews or socialists. In 1970-1980 (in some branches such as sociology, up to now), these criteria were political correctness and leftist thinking. Most importantly, both lists clearly do not include scientific excellence.

But the principal criterion suggested by Humboldt is still valid! That is, the personal recommendation of established scientists decides the fate of the following generations of scientists. With the difference that the established scientists were, once, established on the basis of non-scientific criteria. Humboldt’s idea was that ‘a brilliant scientist will look for another brilliant scientist, and so on’. But a mediocre scientist is naturally looking for other mediocre scientists. In exact according with Humboldt, people recommend further those who are like themselves. Thus the mediocrity is now automatically maintaining mediocrity like earlier brilliance automatically maintained brilliance.
The two shocks were further complicated by some natural circumstances. At Humboldt’s time, there were a few small universities with several hundreds of professors who taught a small number of students. Now there are hundred of universities and colleges (“Hochschulen”) whose task is to educate a good third of the German population. The criterion of personal recommendation (‘He is good, because I know that he is good, and you know that I am good’) cannot work in these conditions as it worked 200 or even 100 years ago. This is like Communism which can work, at least for some time, in groups of 100-200 people (Kibbuzim) but immediately fails in any large community.

To summarise: You argue that the scientific community should be self-ruled rather than bureaucracy -ruled. Your arguments are convincing. Particularly as long as the academic self-rule still does its job. But when the chain is once broken, it does not work any longer.