Sally Hines accuses Professor Rosa Freedman of being mean on Twitter

Sorry father buzz. To be clear the VC needs to sit her down and ask her why the hell she is spouting nonsense on Twitter and national radio about sex being on a spectrum etc. Her ‘research’ won’t be worth anything. Unless she is working in the ‘dept of beliefs’.
If sex has suddenly become a spectrum then she will need to back this up. I am sure there will be lots of scientists there trying to ignore her.

The problem I have with the current strain of gender research is that it is a rehashing of tired old pomo queer stuff. I read a peice recently asking where the hell had the gender studies about InGOs and development work gone, all disappeared in favour of queer theory sucking up all the cash. I will see if I can find the paper again.

These are the screenshots

Yeah, I mean Sally is an idiot and cannot back up her points, but that tweet isn’t the best from an academic. I assumed it was aimed at Sally too. I can’t think who else it would be targeting. Sally has published articles and presumably those would be eligible for inclusion in the REF. The REF cycle is also not over and she is involved in two major funded projects, so it’s not unreasonable to assume that she will have some outputs for 2021. Sally also said on twitter that she is leading on a case study.
To be fair, Sally has given as good as she has got by her comments about being pathetic and a nasty piece of work, but I am a bit disappointed that neither of them comes across very well here. Also, the REF causes so much stress for academics that publicly calling out someone’s lack of publications looks really really poor, even if the person being called out is a dick.

I agree that the REF is a blunt an inadequate instrument.

However the contention was that SH hadn't published refable set of literature.

SH has just confirmed on Twitter that she has.

RF is now denying her tweet was about SH at all.

If the VC of any university carpeted an academic for doing research they didn't like then I hope every other academic in the country would be out protesting.

I agree. However, many of them were quite silent about James Caspian being told he couldn't do research about detransitioning.

The vice chancellor needs to sit her down.

If the VC of any university carpeted an academic for doing research they didn't like then I hope every other academic in the country would be out protesting. Hines' research sounds deeply questionable to me (but then again it's not my area) and she's behaved like a complete spanner on R4 and twitter, but I would absolutely stand up for her right to do it in the face of some research and teaching-dodging bureaucrat who decided that her externally funded research is damaging the brand of the university.

So of there are not @posts then was there any REF post?

Can you tell I don't do Twitter?

I'm not sold on the REF. I think it has had some damaging impacts. However, it is here and here to stay for the foreseeable future.
Academics work within the framework and so it would be surprising to discover a prof not producing refable work. Questioning why an academic is not producing refable work, if they aren't, is not supporting or colluding with the REF system, it is simply factoring in the context that academics currently work within when reviewing their work.

Is she actually at Leeds uni? They cannot seriously be paying her for this.
What does Leeds medical school and biology dept have to say?
Is she trying to get Leeds off the league tables?
The vice chancellor needs to sit her down. As a parent I wouldn’t encourage (or sub the fees!) any child near an institution that publicly supported this irrational chat.

The REF is a bullshit bureaucratic system enforced on academia by successive UK governments. It concerns that me that some academics have swallowed the REF agenda to the extent that they can now only judge other academics work by how 'REFable' it is. Sally Hines work should be judged on its own merits, not by whether or not it meets some arbitrary criteria of research value set by civil servants.

Completely agree. However, if it's true that Hines has produced little or nothing that meets the criteria for REF submission despite having the best part of a million quid in ESRC funding (which is targeted at precisely the kind of projects that DO produce REF-able research outputs), and despite having no students to teach, then that's deeply odd. That said, it could be that material in her field takes a long time to get published - some journals in my area have a waiting list of 18 months or more, so she could have had an article accepted in spring 2017 and still be waiting for it to come out.

The REF is a bullshit bureaucratic system enforced on academia by successive UK governments. It concerns that me that some academics have swallowed the REF agenda to the extent that they can now only judge other academics work by how 'REFable' it is. Sally Hines work should be judged on its own merits, not by whether or not it meets some arbitrary criteria of research value set by civil servants.

Alan H (zeno001) ran a Twitter search to see if Sally Hines assertion about the @'ing is true.

It does not seem as if there are any instances that would back up SH's description of events.

twitter.com/zeno001/status/1066503538828894208

twitter.com/aytchellesse/status/1066469348246605824

I would love to see high quality research that could defend Hine's theses. Asking for/ seeking refable pieces seems like a sensible way forward. She should be producing this, in light of her being a prof.

And yours, MsB.

This is what a robust exchange looks like - one that actually helps the civilians reading understand the issues and form their own opinion.

Much as I respect Rosa Freedman I don't support this line of attack. The pressure on academics to publish in high impact journals is not necessarily a good thing for academia. The REF is not a perfect process and academics shouldn't be using it as a stick to beat other academics with. There are plenty of criticisms to make of Sally Hines intellectual positions without point scoring like this.

See, spanna, if you'd made a substantive and sensible criticism of Rosa's tweet like this one, we could have saved a lot of effort, couldn't we? And have engaged on actual positions instead of smoke and mirrors.

I see your point, Chiara.

Chiara
I am not convinced it is point scoring.
The REF was introduced to encourage the generation and dissemination of high quality research in order to generate new knowledge.
I am sick to the back teeth of claims of 'new knowledge' being made by TRAs (including Prof. Hines) when that 'new knowledge' is just bunkum.

I would love to see high quality research that could defend Hine's theses. Asking for/ seeking refable pieces seems like a sensible way forward. She should be producing this, in light of her being a prof.

It’s quite funny that she accuses Prof Freedman of being mean, and then calls her “pathetic”. Oh dear.

Sally Hines still needs to make her case.

She didn't/was unable to during Woman's Hour. The foundation of her arguments appear to be "Some scientists believe that sex is a spectrum" and 'intersex' medical conditions - and both have been well and truly de-bunked as ridiculous, irrelevant, incoherent and misleading in our understanding of gender identity.

When taxpayers' money is being put into gender projects, then the public has a right to know that there will be some value in the outcome. The WH interview raises concerns about whether Leeds University knows what it is doing, to put it mildly. The Economic and Research Council needs a reality check and Rosa F's alerts are a public service, in my view.

Have we seen Freedman'sTweet or are we just going on Hines' word? Someone said that her reports of @ing hadn't been verified/found, so I am just wondering if it is ALL made up!

Much as I respect Rosa Freedman I don't support this line of attack. The pressure on academics to publish in high impact journals is not necessarily a good thing for academia. The REF is not a perfect process and academics shouldn't be using it as a stick to beat other academics with. There are plenty of criticisms to make of Sally Hines intellectual positions without point scoring like this.

I almost wish I had stayed lecturing... I haven't seen such poorly wielded semantics in ages, spanna

You are going to have to admit that you got it wrong. There's nothing wrong in being protective of a viewpoint, or those that share it. MN and FWR in particular, would be a much poorer place without disparate view. But when you commit a blooper, fess up. Then we can all move on with facts in place rather than obfuscations that leave an unpleasant taste in the mouth!

Thing is, none of us academics have had final decisions about what's being submitted yet so how could Rosa possibly know?

Us academics usually make damned sure that we have a minimum of 4 high quality, ref-able pieces to submit.

Are you suggesting that Hines has so many that the decision as to which to include will be challenging. Where are they being hidden?

The increasing emphasis on impact is interesting. If another professor can not find anything ref-able one would suggest that the work has had limited impact!

Some of the stuff which will end up being submitted to the next REF HASN'T BEEN WRITTEN YET

True. So are you now conceding that Hines is yet to publish anything REF-able in this period?

Clarity, please.

Presumably by there being or not being published work that meets the criteria for submission?

Well, quite.

I am inclined to credit Rosa on this since she is very careful with language and is a legal academic - she will have tweeted precisely what she means: no more and no less.

I am much less inclined to credit those who cannot explain why Rosa is not correct with clarity and without resorting to obfuscation.