Bolt's laughable attack on the Australian Research Council
Andrew Bolt must look forward to the announcement of ARC Grants as much as academics do. It provides him, once a year, with a column that writes itself. Instead of pouring scorn on projects in Cultural Studies, he’s killed two birds with one stone this year by having a pop at all the scientific research that aims to address climate change.
PSST. Want a surefire way to get a grant - maybe $300,000, or even more - for your university research? Then gather around, my dear professors, and say these magic words. Climate change.Over at Pure Poison, Dave Gaukroger does a pretty good job at swatting all this aside, pointing out that Bolt’s claim that addressing climate change is a surefire way to attract funding sits uneasily with the fact that only 10% of funded projects claimed to be doing this:
That leaves us with two very interesting possibilities, either 1022 ARC grant recipients are too dumb to follow Andrew’s funding recommendations, or alternatively, we have a well balanced research funding system, unaffected by political interference.Of course, the real story here is that with the end of the Howard Government, Bolt has lost the capacity he once had to encourage education ministers (like Brendan Nelson) to intervene in the distribution of research funding, and acting against the advice of the ARC’s own expert panels. Bolt can still write this annual column disparaging Australian researchers, but for now, there’s no powerful constituency listening.
