I have seen this Prof. I spent 3 months at the Commonwealth Building, part of Hammersmith Hospital, Imperial College.
I worked for this guy. After 3 months there, he decided that we are moving to UCL. He got a better offer for him and the group. Imperial tried to convince him otherwise, he denied. And then it got nasty...
He started getting mean emails from two big guys of the faculty and our move was sabotaged. It was delayed over and over again. Then they told him that he is not allowed to take 1mil pounds of grant money with him because the grant is bound to Imperial etc.
It was not fun, but I think its going better at UCL...
It seems a fairly common occurrence here in the US. Many universities have been expanding their lab space over the past decade, but there isn't enough money to fill it. It's easier to put pressure on the faculty, rather than put it on those that determine the funding levels.
- These fixed performance targets are simply absurd. It’s called "research" because you don’t know how ir will come out. I’m told that if you apply for an Academic Clinical Fellowship at Imperial you are told
“Objectives and targets: The goal would be to impart sufficient training in the chosen subspecialty, as to enable the candidate to enter a MD/PhD programme at the end of the fellowship. During the entire academic training programme, the candidate is expected to publish at least five research articles in peer-reviewed journals of impact factor greater than 4.”
That’s a recipe for short term, unoriginal research. It’s an incentive to cut corners. Knowing that a paper has been written under that sort of pressure makes me less inclined to believe that the work has been done thoroughly. It is a prostitution of science
Now this is a guy I would like to work for!!!!