Sažetak
Some years ago my dear friend Hamish Macleod emailed me the article entitled ‘Peter Higgs: I wouldn’t be productive enough for today’s academic system’ (Aitkenhead 2013). The Nobel Prize winning physicist, and one of my intellectual heroes, said that he had a hard time working at the University of Edinburgh because he ‘published fewer than 10 papers after his groundbreaking work, which identified the mechanism by which subatomic material acquires mass, [which] was published in 1964’. Higgs said that, after that work and prior to winning the Nobel prize in 2013, he had been treated like ‘an embarrassment to the department when they did research assessment exercises.’ Speaking of today’s employment criteria, he says: ‘Today I wouldn’t get an academic job. It’s as simple as that. I don’t think I would be regarded as productive enough.’ Responding to a question about the conditions which contributed to the Nobel Prize winning discovery, Higgs continued: ‘It’s difficult to imagine how I would ever have enough peace and quiet in the present sort of climate to do what I did in 1964’ (Aitkenhead 2013). If people like Peter Higgs are indeed an embarrassment to their schools and departments, then who is their pride?
Ključne riječi
Postdigital ; Research ; Measurement