Filling forms

Filling forms

I've spent yet another day talking to people about research - or rather how we could fund research. Good intentions and willingness to make something of it all round but it melted down to filling yet another grant form, highly redundant and over-analytical. It's not easy making a distinction between research output and research results, deliverables, products, proofs of concept, demonstrations, pilots and all other near-synonyms. An officious young agent or official from the grant organisation, with full hipster insignia, was getting impatient with out lack of knowledge and understanding of their jargon. The group, large and varied, was confused and confusing, slow and difficult to move but in the end, with the help of tiredness, we managed to reach an almost satisfactory result. With growing impatience I tried to push ahead, making my voice heard a bit too often. I regret that; I prefer to be in the background and contribute at crucial points rather than pull the group towards any direction.

One could have called it a successful day in all. Even the travel (by Thalys train, a real joy despite the overcrowding) was relaxed and efficient. Still, I can't help feeling failed and betrayed. We talked with complete disregard for real research and its applications. If anyone in the group knew the state of the art in the areas involved, they didn't let on. What we had written could have been compiled by a high-school student doing a school project on the basis of a cursory Internet search. Weak, weak researchers: rather than doing our work properly and showing people what should and could be done, letting them gather round and forge great new things, we beg at the tables of the accidentally powerful and derive our research agenda from incoherent, incomplete and often obvious policy documents.