Pub-level argument 2

Clive Bloom, please get your facts "in shape". His article on the direction of post-1992 institutions, using Middlesex University as the prime example of how we have got things wrong, is totally invalidated by its factual inaccuracy.

This emeritus professor knows very little of the university he purports to speak of with authority. Middlesex does have a "faculty", if not faculties, of science: in fact, it has four schools, one of engineering and information science, and another of health and social science.

The latter notably contains a highly successful biomedical science research group, and Times Higher Education has reported on its internationally renowned work on a cancer vaccine.

Far from being a failure, Middlesex is in fact an example of the direction of travel the academy needs to take.

I agree with Bloom that we should close the weakest institutions, which inevitably are going to be the humanities-centred ones, not the likes of Middlesex - but I would say that, as I am a scientist and we have to base our arguments on facts.

Ray Iles, Professor of biomedical sciences, School of Health and Social Science, Middlesex University.