The thing that surprises me most about the findings of a new Research England-funded report into academic research culture is how consistent they are.
For the report, researchers at the University of Bristol surveyed 406 researchers around the world, and interviewed ten in depth. Across different career stages and disciplines, the same overall patterns emerge.
They’re also patterns I recognise myself from when I came to academia from documentary-making in 2016, and which spurred me to start working for systemic change. Issues with the culture around research don’t just affect the researchers (important though that is), they affect the quality of research – the robustness of the whole evidence base on which our societies base their most vital decisions. Health, economics, education, conservation, energy, and sustainability all rely on published research. But can they be confident in what’s out there?
Research publications – peer reviewed summaries of research findings in academic journals – are supposed to form the evidence base on which the rest of society can rely. While understanding that one publication does not a firm finding make, policymakers, journalists and researchers should be able to review and read the academic literature to find out how well a policy or treatment works, the strength of that evidence, whether there is counter-evidence, and what hasn’t yet been tried and tested.
