I had always assumed that this list dealt with policy issues, not styles of expression.
Just a remark done with a smile (and no cynicism). And indeed, as I have had the opportunity to express it a little while ago, "le style, c'est l'homme" (Buffon). As for creating better indicators, I am not involved in this kind of work, but I am all for it, of course. Who can be against motherhood and apple pie (and Yves Gingras)? Jean-Claude Guédon -----Original Message----- From: American Scientist Open Access Forum on behalf of Yves Gingras Sent: Sun 8/10/2008 3:41 PM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: AMERICAN-SCIENTIST-OPEN-ACCESS-FORUM Digest - 8 Aug 2008 to 9 Aug 2008 (#2008-153) It could be expected that my colleague Jean-Claude Guedon would offer himself to teach us in his usual cynical, smiling, tongue-in-cheek manner the simplistic and obvious constructivist explanation about what ³sticks² in society; as if we, poor naïve, did not know this basic fact that, in society, all representations are born and die in struggles... But has he says: this is ³somewhat irrelevant² to my real point which is: by fighting these absurd measures which can in fact generate stupid university policies we can contribute to better ranking and policies. For following his logic if people would choose their universities on the basis of Feng Shui or even Chineese horsocope (as some may do already) then we would have to live with it if for some contingent reason it happened to ³stick² and be used by students and politicians... This remembers me < believe me: it is true!< a deputy minister of SCIENCE who choose his collaborators based on their astral signs!... But one can see things differently and recall that it took years for Canadian universites to pull out of Macelan¹s rankings, but they did. That was a minimum logical step to do even though to make money Maclean will of course continue to publish it on its own; but at least universities will not use their own money to create that misconceived ranking and in this way give it credibility. So, the same with Shnaghai and Web-rankings: a systematic destruction by people who work in that field (and I may recall that as Scientific Director of the Observatoire des sciences et des technologies (OST), I have been working on research evaluation for more than 10 years with many Ministries and Universities and Research centers and know how to construct a well defined indicator of research impact based on publications and citations. I also know how to recognize false indicators by analyzing their properties. Of course they can be debated and interpreted < as my colleague love to do constatnly< but they are like inflation index or unemployment index: based on controlled and coherent data so that even interpretations are constrained. So, beyond (and after) the basic constructivist soiology of my colleague one can go a step further, which I took as implicit in my text: use every opportunity to recall to managers and politicians that 1) Shanghai indicators and the bizarre one on Web-visibility are ill-conceived and 2) we can create much better indicators 3) using bad indicators can lead to dangerous policies like bad medical diagnostic may lead to giving the wrong pill... As someone who has a certain expertise in indicators, I prefer to try to convince people to use good instead of bad indicatgors and I keep my sociology 101 for my classes. And of course ³good² and ³bad² are also socially constructed as my colleague will urge to add... Bu as a social agent, I fight (naively?) using my expertise (as intellectuals should do) to make sure the conceptual houses that are built in our society are not based on ill-conceived plans. For in analalogy with real houses, badly constructed ones generate strcutural problems and eventually fall; sometimes on real people... But I stop here and I will NOT do like my good friend Stevan: loose much more time in dilettante and unending exchanges with our colleague about obvious facts that lead to more talk and less action. For one can be content with observing the world from above, with the smile of those in the know, or one can try to make it less absurd, even if that means going against the dominant wind. Yves Gingras De : Guédon Jean-Claude <[email protected]> Date : Sat, 9 Aug 2008 08:03:20 -0400 Objet : Re: University ranking The criticism of the university rankings in terms of measuring "what" is quite correct. However, it is also somewhat irrelevant. What is important in the end, whether we like it or not (and I certainly do not like it any more than the previous commentators) is that it creates a benchmark that sticks, so to speak, and is used. If there ever was a good example of social construction of "reality", this is it. What is at stake here is not quality measurement; rather, it is "logo" building for a globalized knowledge economy. If administrators, the press and governmental bureaucracies pay attention - and they obviously have begun to do so - then the strategy works. The solution? In the absence of an institutionally effective critique, all we can hope for is the existence of competing and somewhat divergent indices... But I fear that, in the end, they will converge in one way or another and will create all the distortions that such artificial and, ultimately, manipulative metrics produce. Jean-Claude Guédon
