Research that tells us things, please

It's curious how things collide sometimes. I was very recently in a seminar where two esteemed academics presented research to practitioners. Afterwards they were rightly challenged by two members of the audience to say what the lessons are for local regeneration practice: one even said that she was going to a board meeting later that evening, what should she tell her board-members?

Astonishingly the first response was that the questioner "shouldn't expect answers to questions like that from researchers." (I wrote the words down at the time, half-expecting some kind of brawl to ensue; but probably because of the status of academics and the inferiority-complex of practitioners, nothing happened). The second speaker, with ten years of research to tell us about, invited to respond to the same points, felt unable to add anything.

This little tale will re-emerge because coincidentally I've just been asked to speak at an event in Belgium about research in social work (broadly defined). It seems there is a tension - who'd have thought it? - between the incentive system under which academics provide robust, neutral, peer-reviewed bullet-proof research, and the needs of practitioners for stuff they can use. This is not to say that compromises don't happen of course: sometimes everyone benefits, including policymakers and local people.

And why should any of the rest of us expect to benefit, necessarily? Well it depends on the topic and the funding I suppose. I'm ready to hear justifications for 'pure' research in almost any field.

But in this case the issue for me is that a couple of highly-qualified researchers swallowing public money to investigate the effects of policy measures, should not have been wrong-footed by such a question but should have had it at the front of their minds from start to finish.