Simon Birmingham cuts 4.2M in humanities research

[EEEEEEP]

https://theconversation.com/simon-birminghams-intervention-in-research-funding-is-not-unprecedented-but-dangerous-105737

Senator Simon Birmingham’s personal intervention during his time as education minister in 2017 and 2018 to deny funding to 11 Australian Research Council (ARC) grants, all in the humanities and worth a combined total of A$4.2 million, has sparked outrage.

Birmingham defended his intervention, suggesting most Australian taxpayers would prefer their funding be directed to other research.

When I first read this, I saw it as an attack on "lefty" politics as it was the same minister that ordered the inappropriate “Safe Schools” program out of primary schools (slight possibility). On second thought thought, it seems as the government is looking at this at a more financial perspective.  Research in science or the medical field would save lives and possibly result in more innovation (E.g. new cures and devices). Restoring eye sights and the Cochlear implant, as well as WIFI are just a few things that have came out of research funding. 
 
What are your thoughts? Call me ignorant or uneducated, but I really don't see the importance of "A History of Australian's Mens Dresses" or "Post Orietalist Arts". I'm trying to look at this holistically and have done a few arts electives, but sadly, I think that studies of literary arts are so limited (outside of niche studies).  If funding was limited, I rather see it used in the physical and/or medical sciences (explained above).

[S200]

Coming from a completely non-creative in any way individual...

I personally would rather that the funding was used in areas like medical or technological.
I would rather have my life saved by expensive equipment than pass away under an expensive mural or art collection...

[TheBigC]

Approximately 80% of humanities papers are uncited (https://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/0809/0809.5250.pdf)... this perturbing statistic means much funding is superfluous within this field. I personally believe that cutting funding to the humanities is apposite if these statistics remain this high.

[Bri MT]

I'm a STEM student who loves stem & wants to take as many units of that as possible,  but I think it's inappropriate for Birmingham to have exercised his powers to deny funding without explanation after it has already passed through the ARC.

STEMM can save and enrich lives,  but that doesn't mean that humanities can't. Taking this proposal for example, more effective communication of environmental issues could potentially save lives and taxpayer dollars. 


Safe schools is a separate topic and certainly isn't considered inappropriate by everyone.  I'm not going to argue against that here (to avoid derailing the thread),  but I don't want anyone reading this thread to think that AN universally holds your belief.   

[vox nihili]

Having research funding allocated by the politically unaligned just makes sense. Sure, all of these seem fairly benign, but I don't think that the minister is really an authority on what constitutes important research, nor indeed should research narrowly focus on STEM either.

[hums_student]

Well I'm a hums student through and through and I'd love it if more funding could be provided for arts / humanities research, but I agree with the fact that technology/medical research should be first priority. Spending $300k just to research a history of Australian men's clothing seems a bit preposterous.

Arts can enrich a state's culture but STEM can save lives.

Side note though, I haven't really looked into each of these research project but ANU's seem reasonable to me.

[turinturambar]

Coming from a STEM background, I want to defend the humanities. Prolonging life is possibly a worthy goal, but is it really a benefit where that life has no meaning?  Many people get much more meaning and value in their life from the humanities than they ever do from the sciences (oh, and that in itself saves lives).

Given the competitive process involved (and those grant success rates seem very similar to what our lecturers told us about computer science research), it seems unlikely that the minister has sufficient expertise to second-guess any of the decisions made. It's easy to mock the research based on the titles, but to have succeeded I suspect most of them have other important aspects which meant they were selected. There will be a lot of context, and we lack it.  Perhaps if we knew the full details we would be much more likely to agree with the decision to select them (if you think there's a systematic problem with the state of research, then it needs bigger reforms than a minister vetoing a few projects).

To my mind it is completely irrelevant whether the Australian taxpayer would prefer the funding redirected to other research - it doesn't justify specifically targeting the humanities, because the same could be said of a lot of STEM research (try selling research into an obscure problem in number theory to the average person on the street...)