Straining gnats and swallowing camels on campus

The world is being run by accountants, lawyers, and marketing consultants. They work for corporations, universities, trade unions, and government. Some are "rent seekers" and parasites who project themselves as standing for justice and fairness.

We also live in a world where people are not allowed to make even small mistakes.

These painful realities were highlighted to me this week in an email some colleagues received from the President of their university.

"I am writing to advise staff about the outcome of a pay review initiated in October 2021 and the actions taken as part of this to further strengthen our pay systems and processes. 

The University commenced this external review to ensure our staff are paid accurately and in accordance with our Enterprise Agreement (EA) applicable at the time.

The review took 18 months. How much staff time and money was spent to engage these external consultants on this review? 

While staff were paid for the time they worked, the review identified 2 areas of our EA were not always correctly applied. These relate to the minimum hours of engagement for casual academic and casual professional staff and the use of a different pay rate for casual academic staff with a relevant PhD.

As a result, the University has determined that over a 7-year period (January 2017 to December 2023), an amount of $7.88 million (excluding superannuation and interest) should have been paid to 9743 staff. The median amount to be paid is $243.03.

Note. This corresponds to staff being underpaid by less than one dollar per week! 

I unreservedly apologise to those staff who have been affected by these errors – they should not have happened. I want to assure our community that affected staff will receive all the pay due, including superannuation and interest for the relevant period.

This week, we are writing individually to affected current staff outlining the payment due, with these payments to commence from 14 June.

We will also be writing individually to affected former staff outlining the payment due and the process for remediation.

A comprehensive program is underway to upgrade our systems and processes to further ensure ongoing pay accuracy. Actions being taken include the introduction of a whole-of-Univ timesheet system, compulsory training for managers and staff and additional fortnightly payroll reporting.

Does this mean faculty will now fill out time sheets? 

We are also investing further in our HR systems, with new time and attendance and payroll systems planned.

Sounds like a whole new layer of bureaucracy. 

Throughout this process we have worked closely with the Office of the Fair Work Ombudsman and have advised them of these outcomes.

Again, I apologise that this has occurred and reaffirm our commitment to ensuring staff are appropriately and accurately paid for the work they do on behalf of the University."

Meanwhile I don't hear of any external reviews or apologies for the treatment by university management of people such as Gerd Shroder-Turk, Drew Pavlou, Paul Frijters, or James Allan, ...

Two thousand years ago the following was written.

“Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You give a tenth of your spices—mint, dill and cumin. But you have neglected the more important matters of the law—justice, mercy and faithfulness. You should have practiced the latter, without neglecting the former. 

You blind guides! You strain out a gnat but swallow a camel.

Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You clean the outside of the cup and dish, but inside they are full of greed and self-indulgence."

More superconductivity in Hollywood

I wrote a post about superconductivity being central to the plot of the cult-classic movie, Joe Versus the Volcano. A commenter on the post kindly pointed out that the movie Avatar also features superconductivity. It is nicely captured in this scene.

The Wikipedia entry for Unobtanium is interesting as it describes the long history of the term, predating the movie by decades. I had not heard the term before. It does capture much of the hype and fantasy about research in "advanced materials".

About Avatar the entry states

In the 2009 film Avatar,^[23] "Unobtanium" is the common name of a rare-earth mineral found exclusively in the exomoon Pandora (where the movie takes place, being the fifth moon of the gas giant Polyphemus, which orbits Alpha Centauri A), highly prized (and priced) because of its application as a powerful superconductor material; because of its unusual magnetic properties, entire mountains with high concentrations of unobtanium "levitate" in the atmosphere of Pandora.

The whole is qualitatively different from the parts: beer, birds, and brains

Pint of Science is an annual event in cities all around Australia. Local scientists give short talks about their research to general audiences. I am speaking tonight, along with my colleague Ben Powell. 

I found the tips to speakers very helpful. This led me to try and make the talk more of a personal story, reduce the amount of text on slides, and aim for engagement rather than focusing on scientific details or on technical details of your own research.

Here is the current version of my slides.

The introduction is based on this video and poem about emergence in economics.

This provides an example of how "free" economic markets can work well sometimes. But I will also point out that they can also fail spectacularly, another emergent phenomenon! 

The relevance of Labor Day to physicists and philosophers

This past Monday, May 8, was a public holiday in Queensland, marking Labor Day. I don't know why we don't celebrate it on May 1, but that does not matter.

In honour of the event, I post two relevant resources. The first resource is a moving video by Sabine Hossenfelder, who has carved out a post-academic income as a populariser of physics. The video is funny and sad, describing her own experience in academia leading to "Death of a Dream".

Sabine has many poignant observations about the dysfunctionalities of physics in academia, from the personal to the intellectual.

I find it sad that people who leave academia because they could not find a permanent job see themselves as a "failure." First,  most of the select few who get permanent jobs do so because they are at the right place at the right time, not because they are so much more brilliant and productive than others. Second, there is so much more to life than professional success. Finally, Sabine has been an incredible success. She has been able to popularise physics far beyond what has been achieved by others with big names and lots of resources. Furthermore, Sabine has made a significant contribution to the physics community by calling out hype and BS.

The second resource to mark Labor Day is an article, 

In Australian Universities, There Is No Such Thing as a Secure Job, by Danny Wardle. 

It puts a specific (alarming) incident in the broader context of the history of how and why the governance and management of Australian universities have been captured by the ideology of neoliberalism. This has been facilitated by the opportunism and vanity of mediocre academics who become "managers" with million-dollar salaries.