Regular followers of this blog will interested to see that the Daily Telegraph has published an article about Professor Neil Wyn Evans about bullying in UK universities, with particular reference to his own experiences during a long-running dispute at the Institute of Astronomy at Cambridge.
If you would rather not click through to the Torygraph, here is the most remarkable revelation (amongst many). It is about an investigation by an independent barrister that took over eighteen months to do complete. When Prof. blew the whistle on what he saw as bullying, he ended up being himself investigated, though the investigation dismissed all the claims made against him:
In his independent report into Prof Evans’ whistleblowing claims, the external barrister appointed by Cambridge University said he regretted the length of time that the investigation took and “the effect this will undoubtedly have had on all those involved”. The barrister also raised concerns that several staff members pulled out of providing testimony “over fears they would face retaliation.
It is a sorry state of affairs when members of staff refuse to provide testimony to an investigation for for fear of retaliation, and an even sorrier state when you realize that the feared retaliation would come from the University’s own Human Resources Department!
This is not only a problem at Cambridge, of course. Universities generally are terrible at dealing with this sort of thing. At least there’s at least a chance of doing something about it in Cambridge, however, as Neil Wyn Evans is standing for the Chancellorship of Cambridge University. He’s got my vote.
. For a sample of size 
with 
respondents indicating that they hen one can straightforwardly estimate 
. So far so good, as long as there is no bias induced by the form of the question asked nor in the selection of the sample which, given the fact that 
this amounts to a standard error of about 2%. About 95% of samples drawn from a population in which the true fraction is 
, i.e. within about 4% of the true figure. In other words the typical variation between two samples drawn from the same underlying population is about 4%. In other other words, the change reported between the two ORB polls mentioned above can be entirely explained by sampling variation and does not at all imply any systematic change of public opinion between the two surveys.
In the Dark 