Impact initiative will ‘corrupt thinking’, Nobel laureates claim

A call from 49 signatories not to asses the impact section of research council grant applications is reported in the THES 14 April 2011:

In a letter in today’s Times Higher Education, the group says the research councils’ “Pathways to Impact” initiative, which requires grant applicants to explain how they will maximise the impact of their research, “corrupts researchers’ thinking, obliges them to prejudge results while planning their proposals and encourages them to aim for attainable goals”.