Naked Scientist has awfully high opinion of himself

[Tristan]

I’m sure his podcast is good, but Chris Smith does not come out of this looking particularly good: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cz9kpx70p7xo

The podcast seems to be separate to his academic work and he has a company with reserves of £900k for it.

He complains that "they will be assessing me based on research papers in journals and the reaction to that". Yeah, isn’t that what he’s actually paid for as an academic?

Love the bit where he says he put THE UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE on the map. Thank god he did that. I’d never heard of Cambridge before his podcast.

[sTeamTraen]

I'm always very skeptical of Telly Scientists™. They probably get hired initially because they have some expertise in one particular topic (and/or are friends with a producer, etc etc), and if then don't drool everywhere too badly then they are asked back a couple more times, and if they are sufficiently conventionally good looking the Telly People catch on to them, and before you know it they're making twice their academic salary in appearance fees while pontificating on things that they don't have even an A-level knowledge of, thanks to a team of researchers. See also "Science YouTubers".

[Gfamily]

I’m sure his podcast is good, but Chris Smith does not come out of this looking particularly good: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cz9kpx70p7xo

The podcast seems to be separate to his academic work and he has a company with reserves of £900k for it.

He complains that "they will be assessing me based on research papers in journals and the reaction to that". Yeah, isn’t that what he’s actually paid for as an academic?

If the university determined him worthy to be a 'fellow for the public understanding of science', then that stuff above (the papers etc) is not all he's paid for - and in terms of promoting Cambridge University; with the reach of his Podcasts, he's certainly reaching far more than other UofC people.
I don't know who else at that university has a comparable profile. Do you?

c.f
Richard Dawkins and Marcus du Sautoy at Oxford University
Brian Cox at Manchester University
Jim Al-Khalili at the University of Surrey
Alice Roberts at the University of Birmingham.

[bob sterman]

If the university determined him worthy to be a 'fellow for the public understanding of science', then that stuff above (the papers etc) is not all he's paid for - and in terms of promoting Cambridge University; with the reach of his Podcasts, he's certainly reaching far more than other UofC people.
I don't know who else at that university has a comparable profile. Do you?

Of course - if someone is appointed as a "fellow for the public understanding of science" it should not all be about papers.

Cambridge do have Hannah Fry too - huge public profile and does a lot of work on public understanding - but not prolific in terms of papers (certainly not recently)..

https://www.cam.ac.uk/research/news/han ... athematics

[Tristan]

I’m sure his podcast is good, but Chris Smith does not come out of this looking particularly good: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cz9kpx70p7xo

The podcast seems to be separate to his academic work and he has a company with reserves of £900k for it.

He complains that "they will be assessing me based on research papers in journals and the reaction to that". Yeah, isn’t that what he’s actually paid for as an academic?

If the university determined him worthy to be a 'fellow for the public understanding of science', then that stuff above (the papers etc) is not all he's paid for - and in terms of promoting Cambridge University; with the reach of his Podcasts, he's certainly reaching far more than other UofC people.
I don't know who else at that university has a comparable profile. Do you?

c.f
Richard Dawkins and Marcus du Sautoy at Oxford University
Brian Cox at Manchester University
Jim Al-Khalili at the University of Surrey
Alice Roberts at the University of Birmingham.

Even if the expectation on that role is lower volume he should still be publishing and it’s fair for the university to measure him on that. It’s also fair for the university to decide they don’t want/need someone in that Public Understanding of Science role at the moment. They’re struggling financially and it may be those roles are a luxury they can’t afford at the moment.

I found the idea that he put University of Cambridge on the map funny. Somehow I think Cambridge will do fine for brand recognition without him.

[bob sterman]

Even if the expectation on that role is lower volume he should still be publishing and it’s fair for the university to measure him on that. It’s also fair for the university to decide they don’t want/need someone in that Public Understanding of Science role at the moment. They’re struggling financially and it may be those roles are a luxury they can’t afford at the moment.

They appointed Hannah Fry to one of these roles starting Jan 1st 2025 - so they clearly want people in these roles at the moment.

[Tristan]

I’d also suggest that if his reaction to this is to go crying to the press in that way he’s likely a nightmare to work with, which may have some bearing on their decision.

[kerrya1]

Whilst he does come across as a bit of a twit in the article, and we don't know the actual reasons he is at risk of redundancy I also think he is highlighting the very narrow criteria by which research academics are recognised and rewarded for their work.

This is a huge problem right now when grant income generated and H-Index are still the predominant metrics by which academic promotions, contract extensions, etc are decided. The system is heavily weighted against ECRs, women, people of colour, and other minority/marginalised groups and is reinforced by the REF exercise which determines core university research funding in the UK.

As a result it is a system that has contributed significantly to poor (and downright fraudulent) research practices by prioritising churning out publications in order to gain more grant funding to churn out more papers and round and round it goes. Universities and governments worldwide need to move away from using the easy to measure grant income and publications metrics to judge research and researchers and towards a model that considers tthe quality and contribution made by the research.

I recommend the Hidden Ref (https://hidden-ref.org/) and CoARA (https://coara.eu/) as further reading on this.

[Tristan]

Whilst he does come across as a bit of a twit in the article, and we don't know the actual reasons he is at risk of redundancy I also think he is highlighting the very narrow criteria by which research academics are recognised and rewarded for their work.

This is a huge problem right now when grant income generated and H-Index are still the predominant metrics by which academic promotions, contract extensions, etc are decided. The system is heavily weighted against ECRs, women, people of colour, and other minority/marginalised groups and is reinforced by the REF exercise which determines core university research funding in the UK.

If that was the point he was trying to make then I question his communication skills. Personally I wouldn’t have led with “don’t they know who I am? I’m kind of a big deal!” if trying to make that message.

[bob sterman]

This is a huge problem right now when grant income generated and H-Index are still the predominant metrics by which academic promotions, contract extensions, etc are decided. The system is heavily weighted against ECRs, women, people of colour, and other minority/marginalised groups and is reinforced by the REF exercise which determines core university research funding in the UK.

The new criteria for REF 2029 may reward - not penalise - departments for having staff like this.

There will be no minimum number of research outputs for a staff member (institutions will not submit outputs linked to individual staff at all - they will just submit a pool of outputs - 2.5 x average FTE in unit during 2025/26 and 2026/27).

And the "Impact" part of submissions is being replaced with "Engagement & Impact" which will specifically reward institutions for public engagement activities...

https://www.publicengagement.ac.uk/reso ... engagement

So for REF success, 2025 is the year for institutions to invest in public engagement - not cut it.

[kerrya1]

This is a huge problem right now when grant income generated and H-Index are still the predominant metrics by which academic promotions, contract extensions, etc are decided. The system is heavily weighted against ECRs, women, people of colour, and other minority/marginalised groups and is reinforced by the REF exercise which determines core university research funding in the UK.

The new criteria for REF 2029 may reward - not penalise - departments for having staff like this.

There will be no minimum number of research outputs for a staff member (institutions will not submit outputs linked to individual staff at all - they will just submit a pool of outputs - 2.5 x average FTE in unit during 2025/26 and 2026/27).

And the "Impact" part of submissions is being replaced with "Engagement & Impact" which will specifically reward institutions for public engagement activities...

https://www.publicengagement.ac.uk/reso ... engagement

So for REF success, 2025 is the year for institutions to invest in public engagement - not cut it.

Hopefully this will work but there is a lot of detail lacking, especially around PCE, and the emphasis is still primarily on publications rather than other valuable outputs like data, code, and methodologies.

[bob sterman]

Hopefully this will work but there is a lot of detail lacking, especially around PCE, and the emphasis is still primarily on publications rather than other valuable outputs like data, code, and methodologies.

Yes - but what hasn't sunk in at many institutions (or they don't want to acknowledge it) is that with the changes - you can have a staff member who makes important contributions to PCE and Engagement & Impact - without them having a research publication included in the submitted outputs. They will contribution to the volume measure without lowering the GPA.

[Tristan]

Whilst he does come across as a bit of a twit in the article

From what I've heard I'd say "bit of a twit" is putting it extremely mildly.

[warumich]

Without knowing what his contract says it's difficult to speculate. Cambridge is well known for having an army of precariously employed academics going from contract to contract, often achieving relatively senior positions along the way. I've been made redundant by Cambridge once, mainly because the money ran out. Don't know if that's his position or not, but of course redundancy is never nice.

Him being a twit doesn't mean he's not deserving of sympathy; I didn't get an interview from the BBC about this, but then I didn't do all the extra stuff he does, so I think that's fair as far as it goes.

What pisses me off, and that's by no means his fault, is that there are currently 99 universities in the UK with open or very recent redundancy programs, and often quite eye-wateringly extensive ones (the latest news is from Lancaster trying to cut 400 staff). I've just survived a compulsory redundancy round in my place; but just a month or two after the scare was over for me, Keir Starmer made his announcements about tightening post study visas even further and immediately (Starmer's stinky breath still hung in the air), our VC emailed us saying this means more redundancies...

This is not really being covered by the BBC. Some other more prominent places making redundancies such as Cardiff do occasionally make the news, but then it's usually blaming local management for this, rather than the structural financial issues of UK HE caused by the previous right-wing government's xenophobia and incompetence, and the current right-wing government's refusal to do anything about it. I mean the UK is incredibly unlucky to have as many as 99 incompetent university leadership teams just at the time overseas postgrad study applications are collapsing. What an unfortunate coincidence. Annoyingly, even the UCU often seems to persist in stinking about individual leadership teams rather than highlighting this as a national problem.

It looks like we have to wait until Camford and Oxbridge run into redundancies before there's any real BBC coverage. So I kind of welcome Dr Smith going to the media about this, even if he's a twit and probably has enough of a social media profile now to easily find somewhere else or go freelance. Unlike, for example, me.

[Tristan]

Him being a twit doesn't mean he's not deserving of sympathy

From what I've heard this morning he is ENTIRELY undeserving of sympathy.

[Stephanie]

Could be wrong, but the bit about putting Cambridge on the map I read as referring specifically to coverage during the pandemic, as opposed to in general.

[Bewildered]

Could be wrong, but the bit about putting Cambridge on the map I read as referring specifically to coverage during the pandemic, as opposed to in general.

That’s how I read it too.

[LydiaGwilt]

I’d also suggest that if his reaction to this is to go crying to the press in that way he’s likely a nightmare to work with, which may have some bearing on their decision.

Just for balance, in my experience that is not so. I haven't worked with him directly, but my institution/department and several close colleagues have, we have hosted him at several events and I have met him several times. He was uniformly cheerful, likeable, and interested in almost anything anyone said - and really good with students and people from LMICs. He probably does have a fairly high opinion of himself but not out of the ordinary for a Cambridge medic.

[Tristan]

I’d also suggest that if his reaction to this is to go crying to the press in that way he’s likely a nightmare to work with, which may have some bearing on their decision.

Just for balance, in my experience that is not so. I haven't worked with him directly, but my institution/department and several close colleagues have, we have hosted him at several events and I have met him several times. He was uniformly cheerful, likeable, and interested in almost anything anyone said - and really good with students and people from LMICs. He probably does have a fairly high opinion of himself but not out of the ordinary for a Cambridge medic.

I've heard about people who've worked for him. My sympathy is still nil.