Colegas,
Copiei, abaixo, o manifesto Slow Science, para quem quiser parar um
pouquinho :) para dar uma olhada. Eu que, pessoalmente, simplesmente não
consigo acelerar ao ritmo considerado adequado pelos padrões
avaliatórios atuais, achei interessante este movimento, que venho ao meu
modo e na medida do possível e de minhas limitações, tentando praticar.
Embora eu também ache que esta é uma questão pessoal de foro íntimo.
Fazemos nossas escolhas, de acordo com nossas personalidades, e arcamos
com suas consequências, seja acelerando seja desacelerando. Felizmente
aqui no Brasil, pelo menos na Filosofia e talvez na Matemática, ainda é
possível aos mais lentos (ou não tão rápidos) sobreviver. Acho que na
Computação a pressão é um pouco maior.
Saudações lentas,
Daniel
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(http://slowscience.fr/?page_id=43)
**
*For a Slow Science movement*
Researchers, teachers, we urgently need to slow down! Let’s free
ourselves of the Red Queen Syndrome! Stop wanting to run faster and
faster. Stop wanting to run faster and faster, which just results in
standing still or even going backward. Following Slow Food, Slow City
and Slow Travel, we call for the creation of the Slow Science movement.
Looking, thinking, reading, writing and teaching all take time. We have
less and less of this time, if we have not lost it completely. Within
our institutions and beyond, social pressure promotes a culture of
immediacy and urgency. With real-time, just-in-time production, projects
come and go at an ever increasing pace. Our professional lives are not
the only victims of this pressure – a colleague who is not overworked
and stressed out passes for eccentric, apathetic or lazy – but also to
the detriment of science. Fast Science, like Fast Food, favors quantity
over quality.
We multiply the research projects to fund our laboratories, which are
often poverty-stricken. In consequence, as soon as we have finished
developing one program and, by merit or by luck, got a grant, we must
immediately consider meeting the next tender, rather than devoting
ourselves to the first project.
Because the appraisers and other experts are always in a hurry too, our
CVs are often solely evaluated by their length: how many publications,
how many presentations, how many projects? This phenomenon creates an
obsession with quantity in scientific production. One result is that it
is impossible to read everything, even within a narrow speciality. Thus,
many articles are never cited and they may not even be read. In this
context, it is increasingly difficult to identify publications and
presentations that really matter – those that a colleague has spent
months, sometimes years, perfecting – among the thousands of others that
are duplicated, sliced and recycled, or even more or less “borrowed”.
Of course, the training that we offer must be “innovative”, obviously
“high performance”, “structuring” and adapted to “changes in the
business world”. It is hard to identify the appropriate changes in a
world in perpetual motion. As a result of this frantic race to “adapt”,
the issue of selecting the fundamental knowledge to pass on – knowledge
which, by definition, is unchanging – is no longer on the agenda. What
matters is to be in tune with the times, and especially to change
constantly, to keep the hot air blowing.
If we accept managerial responsibilities (university councils,
departmental or laboratory management), as we are all required to do
during an academic career, we are immediately forced to fill out endless
forms, often giving the same information over and over again. Much more
serious, the result of invasive bureaucracy and “meetingitis” – the
latter to maintain the appearance of collegiality while generally
emptying it of its essence– is that no one has time for anything: we
must comment on the application received today for implementation
tomorrow! While we caricature the situation slightly, the truth is
uncomfortably close.
This degeneration of our activity is not inevitable. Resisting Fast
Science is possible. We can build a Slow Science, giving priority to
values and principles:
* In universities, research is the motor of education, despite the
repeated attacks of those who dream of eliminating research from
French universities. Therefore, at least 50% of our time must be
reserved for research. It determines the quality of everything
else. This principle implies the rejection of any task that would
encroach on the 50%.
* Producing high quality research and publications requires focus
exclusively on these tasks for a sufficiently long time. To this
end, we must have regular periods without managerial
responsibility or training. For example, the right to devote three
months exclusively to research every 4 years.
* Stop focusing on quantity in the CV. Foreign universities already
show the way, by only allowing candidates to mention five
publications in their applications for a position or promotion
(“Reward quality not quantity”, Trimble, S.W., /Nature/, 467 :
789, 2010). This principle implies that we must decide, in a
collegial and transparent way, how to assess scientists by the
quality of their scientific production, not just its quantity.
* Nourished by research, the key mission of university scientists is
the teaching of acquired knowledge. Faculty members must be given
time to teach, by improving their working conditions. How much
time is wasted solving practical, often trivial, problems that are
outside their job definitions? The time spent on administrative
tasks and “setting up frameworks” must be reduced. Those famous
“frameworks” should do no more than define the curriculum specific
to one discipline in one university. There is no need to change
the overall framework every four or five years, as is currently
the case.
* In our management tasks, insist on enough time to study the
issues. In the interest of all, critically analyze the content.
Reject the ersatz democracy and collegiality created by voting on
issues that, in the best case, we only have time to analyze
superficially. There is no reason to accept the ideology of
urgency, repeated ad nauseam by the Ministry and its “managers”.
More generally, we must not forget that there is life outside the
university. We need time for our families, our friends, our
leisure … for the pleasure of doing absolutely nothing!
If you agree with these principles sign the petition text
<http://slowscience.fr/?page_id=8> for the foundation of the Slow
Science movement. Above all, take your time before deciding whether to
sign or not!
Joël Candau, October 29, 2010 (published July 17, 2011)
/Translation : Roger Malina and Alan Parker/
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