Response
We welcome Nepogodiev and Glasbey's response to our letter. The central thesis of our original piece was that points-based selection criteria for training posts are flawed because they are founded on misleading metrics and do not allow for adequate assessment of individuals’ contribution to research, or of their motivation. While we agree that research collaboratives produce high-quality and high-impact research, we do think that these issues become particularly apparent when considered in the context of a large student or junior doctor research collaborative. This is because, by their very nature, collaboratives rely on distributing a large amount of work over a very large number of individuals, thus reducing each individual's proportional contribution. One could easily envisage a situation where a canny (but entirely reasonable) junior doctor would take advantage of this distribution of labour to score a 'point' which was earned with little work, and the wrong motivation. Such a candidate could easily be identified in a less structured application process with more attention paid to white space and freely flowing interview; however, he or she could not be distinguished by an algorithm based on points-for-publications. Collaborative research is changing medicine for the better and should be recognised. The problem lies with application systems which only see points and not individuals.
- © Royal College of Physicians 2018. All rights reserved.
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