RECOGNITION OF ACADEMIC FRAUD IN BRITAIN

A new watchdog to promote research integrity was launched this week with a scathing attack on the "good chaps" network and general complacency in universities that has allowed fraud and misconduct to gain a foothold in the UK academic sector. Sir Ian Kennedy, the chairman of the board of the new UK Panel for Research Integrity, said he had found that many universities' procedures for dealing with allegations of misconduct were "completely unequal to the task", "not fit for purpose" and often "pitiful".

At this week's launch, Michael Farthing, who will chair the panel's planning group, held up a copy of last week's Times Higher, and cited a report on the suspension of a whistleblower at Sheffield University as evidence that universities were not taking the issues seriously enough. He added that whistleblowers were failing to find an ear in their own institutions. The panel - which is funded by a number of sources, including the UK higher education funding councils, research councils, government departments and, more controversially, the Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry - will initially cover research in the health and biomedical sciences only.

But Professor Farthing, who is principal of St George's Hospital Medical School, said he hoped it would soon cover misconduct in all fields. The panel, which has been ten years in the making, will have a permanent office and will be supported by a 24-strong board. It will not have regulatory or policing powers, but will focus on providing support and advice to whistleblowers, developing a code of good practice and maintaining a register of advisers to help institutions improve procedures and ensure that cases are handled effectively.

Sir Ian, who chairs the Healthcare Commission, said a priority would be to support universities. He said: "We looked at universities' procedures and many would not have survived attacks from anybody legally represented. They were not fit for purpose. "The issue has not been taken seriously enough," he said. "There has been a theory that researchers are generally good chaps who couldn't possibly do anything improper and a sense that all is well. But that degree of complacency fails to take into account the pressures of academic life, where the rewards for making breakthroughs and getting published bring real pressures."

Professor Farthing said that the case of Aubrey Blumsohn, the Sheffield researcher suspended after turning to The Times Higher with concerns about the conduct of a drug study at his university, highlighted the need for a panel dedicated to research integrity. "There are some sophisticated and highly concerned whistleblowers who cannot find an ear," he said. "Dr Blumsohn had been talking to the authorities at Sheffield for two years, but instead of taking his concerns seriously - and I don't know if they are right or wrong as I have not seen any evidence - they suspended him for the misdemeanour of talking to the press."

He said the panel would encourage whistleblowers to contact them and would seek to have their concerns investigated. But he acknowledged criticism that its funding sources, its base at the headquarters of Universities UK and its lack of investigatory powers could deter some.

Sally Hunt, general secretary of the Association of University Teachers, said: "It needs to be, and must be seen to be, completely independent. Providing support for whistleblowers is important, but if the panel is relying on funding from bodies that people may wish to blow the whistle on, there is a clear conflict of interest."

Peter Wilmshurst, a consultant cardiologist at the Royal Shrewsbury Hospital, who has exposed a number of research fraud cases, said: "My concern is that this is set up under the auspices of UUK. If you look at the record of the universities, they have consistently concealed research fraud and protected the crooks." Sir Ian said the independence of the panel was secured by his personal integrity and the diverse sources of funding secured.

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CUT-PRICE DEGREES COMING IN BRITAIN

Students will be able to gain an honours degree in only two years as part of a “study anytime” revolution for higher education. Long summer holidays will end for undergraduates on “compressed” degrees as they complete their studies a year early so that they can get on with their careers with reduced levels of debt. Others will take courses entirely at work and through online study in an effort to raise the proportion of adults with degree qualifications. They will be given credit towards their degrees for skills learnt on training courses. A common system of American-style credit accumulation will also allow students to take study breaks and complete degrees later, possibly at different institutions.

Bill Rammell, the Higher Education Minister, said that the proposals would change the face of higher education provision. He told The Times yesterday that radical reform was crucial if Britain was to compete with the rising economic power of China and India. China overtook Britain as the world’s fourth-largest economy this month. Half of new British jobs would require a graduate qualification by 2012, he said. But, while the numbers at university continued to rise, the proportion of people entering higher education had stalled below the Government’s target of 50 per cent. “We have to be more flexible and innovative. Getting more people into higher education is both a social and economic imperative as the international competition looms large.

Higher education had to become “less supplier driven” and take more account of the needs of different customers. Traditional degrees had been organised for the convenience of academics rather than students. “The assumption was that studies would be taken over a fixed period of time, punctuated by a holiday pattern driven by university rather than student needs,” Mr Rammell said. “For many young people the traditional three-year degree allowed for a range of experience of immense personal value. But just because a model fits some people well doesn’t mean it fits all — and increasingly we live in a world where people expect that service providers will have scope to offer flexibility, not uniformity. “A model of full-time provision that dictates that an honours degree must last three years rather than a much more intensive but shorter period of time is, ultimately, supplier driven.”

More flexible courses would allow people “to learn when, where, and in ways that meet their learning needs, preferences and abilities best”. The Government was “very interested” in giving the option of two-year compressed honours degrees. “We would need to ensure the competencies and skills acquired by a student undertaking a compressed degree were the same as a student undertaking a traditional three-year course. However, I believe that two-year degree courses would offer a great opportunity to many students and would encourage those who would not usually feel able to take three years out of their lives to study to see that a degree may be possible for them.” The Higher Education Funding Council for England will begin pilot programmes for compressed degrees at five universities in September, covering a range of subjects.

Mr Rammell said that a common credit framework for universities, now under development, would help students “to complete their education at their own pace, in different modes of study, and in different locations”. The Government also wanted a greater “diversity of provider” in higher education. More degrees would be taught in further education colleges in partnerships with universities. Some students would find it easier to take degrees in the “more supportive atmosphere” of FE colleges, where they may have studied on vocational courses since the age of 14. Pilot schemes providing degrees at work will begin in September. Further education colleges and universities will offer employers “customised provision” to train staff in skills related to businesses. Mr Rammell told university chiefs last week that more degrees should be “partly or wholly designed, funded or provided by employers”.

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Racism phobia can muzzle the truth

The Australian academic world can seem, at least to outsiders, a cosy place where anyone who ventures a dissenting opinion on a sensitive topic gets stomped on very quickly. Let's update the saga of Associate Professor Andrew Fraser, which took an unexpected twist this week. Fraser, you might recall, wrote to the Parramatta Sun last year about the settlement of Sudanese immigrants in the area, with the provocative claim that "experience practically everywhere in the world tells us that an expanding black population is a sure-fire recipe for increases in crime, violence and a wide range of other social problems". Fraser believes that, on average, black people have lower IQs than whites, while Asians have higher IQs.

Macquarie University banned him from teaching because of the letter, and Deakin University in Victoria subsequently directed its law journal not to publish an article by Fraser that it had had refereed and accepted. A Sudanese man complained about Fraser's views to the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission, which announced two weeks ago that the professor had breached the Racial Discrimination Act. Unless he apologises in a form acceptable to the complainant, he could face prosecution in the Federal Court. It's a landmark decision in the history of Australian free speech.

On Wednesday, The Australian newspaper published a letter from six American and European professors, and two other scholars, protesting against the commission's decision. They said: "Fraser has done no more than restate hypotheses offered for more than half a century by eminent psychologists and anthropologists at leading universities." (That's outside Australia, of course.) Indeed, "There is an important and legitimate academic debate going on about race, intelligence and genetics." (Not in Australia, mind you.) Moreover, "It is a sad day when governments and universities once rooted in the traditions of British liberty muzzle academics and public figures from engaging in open discussion."

I don't have an opinion on Fraser's views. Last year, when I interviewed him, he told me it was "hard to spot a white face" in Macquarie University's library, or at Westfield Parramatta. My visits to both places suggest that the professor can't count. There are lots of academics with a flawed sense of proportion whose views I disagree with, yet I wouldn't dream of suggesting the law be used to silence them. So what's happening to Fraser is quite disturbing. Sure it's rare, but maybe that's only because these days it's rare to hear an unusual view on a delicate subject coming from an academic

The other great dissenter of the last few years has been Keith Windschuttle who, in his 2002 book The Fabrication of Aboriginal History, challenged the widely held view that genocide had been practised by white people against the blacks in Tasmania. The abuse that Windschuttle has received from academics has been extraordinary. In the latest issue of Quadrant magazine, Windschuttle has listed some of the personal attacks on him. An historian at Sydney University, Dirk Moses, wondered in 2001 if Windschuttle and two other dissenting writers "experience castration anxiety. That is, a fantasised danger to their genitals symbolised by the [traditional white] national ideal that makes them feel powerful and good about themselves". This statement was published in the peer-reviewed academic journal Aboriginal History. Moses has claimed elsewhere that Windschuttle was once a "fanatical communist", while Professor Robert Manne, of Melbourne's La Trobe University, has several times said he was a Pol Pot enthusiast. According to Windschuttle, both smears were invented.

Some critics have attacked the core of Windschuttle's book by claiming that academic historians never described what happened to the indigenous Tasmanians as genocide. For instance, in Telling the Truth About Aboriginal History, published last year, Associate Professor Bain Attwood, of Monash University, wrote that Windschuttle's "imputation that academic historians have compared the British colonisation of this country to Nazi Germany's treatment of Jews . is a figment of his imagination". This is the same Attwood who, in the 2000 collection Reconciliation, wrote: "The severe historical impact the various dimensions of colonisation have had upon Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders . can and should be called a holocaust."

In 2003 in The Australian, Moses wrote: "No Australian historian contends there was an Australian holocaust." Windschuttle points out that one of those who did actually contend this was Moses himself who, in 2000, in the Journal of Genocide Research, wrote: "Australia has had many genocides, perhaps more than any other country."

Windschuttle and Fraser don't have much in common except that they're probably the two most prominent intellectuals to have challenged conventional wisdom in recent years. The attacks on them make you wonder how widespread low-level reprisals are for less prominent rebels, and whether others stay quiet from fear of suffering the same fate.

I don't know if what Fraser says is true, yet its truth surely affects whether it is racist. But none of his critics seem to care. Macquarie University made no effort to argue the facts with him, nor did Deakin University. A statement by Fraser's union speaks of racism, not the facts. In its letter to Fraser, the human rights commission doesn't raise the issue of truth: what matters is that someone was offended. We need less moralising, more facts.

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For greatest efficiency, lowest cost and maximum choice, ALL schools should be privately owned and run -- with government-paid vouchers for the poor and minimal regulation.

The NEA and similar unions worldwide believe that children should be thoroughly indoctrinated with Green/Left, feminist/homosexual ideology but the "3 R's" are something that kids should just be allowed to "discover"

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