RAE failure verges on criminal 1

May I add to the suspicion voiced by Colin Blakemore and Richard Morris of "a colossal failure on the part of Hefce to achieve comparability between panels" ("More join RAE lynch mob", THES , May 17).

The glaring mismatch between research assessment exercise rating and excellence is even greater when physiology (unit of assessment 7) is compared with sports-related subjects (UoA 69). Of those departments or schools that submitted under the latter and achieved the highest rating (5*), sports science, principally human physiology, was a big contributor to their portfolio.

But when one compares these departments with some of those that achieved grades 5 and 4 in the physiology unit of assessment, it is obvious that the RAE criteria are skewed. I have no axe to grind since, although I am a physiologist, I work in a UoA (biological sciences) that was rated 5* - but neither is it simply the opinion of one whose subject area has suffered. The mismatch can be easily confirmed by examining data in the public domain, for example from PubMed, annual reports and departmental websites, for numbers of publications, quality of publications and grants awarded from charities and research councils.

On this basis, there is a strong likelihood that if the appropriate staff from departments achieving 5* in sports-related subjects had been submitted within physiology, they would have been ranked below (and certainly no better than) Aberdeen, University College London, Leeds, Newcastle, Cambridge, Edinburgh and Bristol - which were all rated 5 or 4.

To cause the drying-up of Hefce funds to high-quality research-active departments while giving more research money to demonstrably weaker ones verges on the criminal.

Mike Rennie
School of Life Sciences
University of Dundee