APPENDIX 3
Memorandum from Dr William James, Sir
William Dunn School of Pathology, University of Oxford
1. I believe that proposals for reform of
an institution of substance, like NIMR, need to start with an
analysis of how it has been performing in relation to the function
it is supposed to discharge.
2. It appears to me that the primary function
is intended to remain the pursuit of medically-related research
at the highest level.
3. Against this measure, the performance
of NIMR is not evaluated in the document from the MRC entitled
"NIMR: Consultation with Stakeholders, May 2004", and
so all the prescriptions and possibilities that follow cannot
be evaluated as solutions to the "problem".
4. I have briefly looked at the key outputs
of NIMR over the last half decade in comparison with my own 5*
institution, together with the financial inputs and believe the
evidence indicates that the MRC is getting a good deal for its
money.
5. If NIMR is not broken, why fix it, particularly
if there is any serious danger that the operation has a risk of
failure?
6. Briefly, NIMR has about twice the number
of principal investigators than the Dunn School, costs approximately
twice the amount to run and publishes approximately twice the
number of papers.
7. The proportion of post-docs is lower
and the proportion of support and admin staff higher at NIMR than
here, but if the output is good, why should that be a concern?
8. Of the papers published in 1999 at both
institutions, the top 10 cited papers from NIMR were cited an
average of 186 times (+/-15) and the top five papers from the
Dunn School in the same year were cited an average of 150 (+/-13)
times.
9. This brief analysis suggests that NIMR
is performing at the very top of the national scale in terms of
quantity and quality of scientific output, at a cost per unit
output that is comparable with another highly regarded, University-based
institution.
10. The Task force needs to make a more
persuasive case than it has that radical change is needed, in
my view.
27 October 2004
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