Thanks to the keen efforts of fellow bloggers in the UK like Gimpy’s Blog, Holford Watch, 10Minus9 and Evidence Matters, I did a little bit of reading on the recently produced report by Fast Future called ‘The Shape of Jobs to Come‘ (pdf).
As a teacher of teenagers, I was somewhat interested in how it suggested young people should look at careers and cost around £7,500 to make. Since I’ve spent some time interviewing high-school students on post-compulsory schooling, I guess it was relevant to me in that regard too.
Now, I’m not a ‘local’ and certainly not from the UK! So, if you’re looking for some devoted and detailed commentary, you’re best going to those blog-entries that I’ve linked to above. You can read how they question elements such as: how many of the jobs listed already exist, while others are simply implausible; respondents were overwhelmingly based in North America and Europe with 65% of respondents were male and 35% female; and how ‘it is entirely inappropriate to describe this research as ‘rigorous and credible’”.
For my own part, here’s one interesting factor that I noticed as I put the ‘The Shape of Jobs to Come’ document into the plagiarism program called ‘TurnItIn‘, just to see how much was referenced from research and pre-existing materials.
As one of the lead authors was Rohit Talwar, CEO of Fast Future, it amused me that a large segment of the report was practically directly lifted from a site called Business Intelligence Middle East… which has a nice spiel about Talwar’s book ‘Designing your Future‘ that was was published in August 2008 as the ‘culmination of a six month research programme Talwar undertook for the American Society of Association Executives and the Center for Association Leadership’.
Is it just me, but is it kind of odd having the American Society of Association Executives and the Center for Association Leadership’s research from 2008 (let alone that BIME site’s text!) being applied to the UK’s in the form of an Appendix? Are they really that closely linked? Perhaps I’m missing something…
Demographic Shifts – The two critical demographic stories for the first half of 21st century will be population growth and ageing, and both will present challenges. The UN predicts the global population will reach 9.1 billion by 2050. Based on these projections, population growth in Asia to 2050 could outstrip the populations of Europe and North America combined. Indeed, large chunks of Europe as well as Japan and a number of other countries will actually see their population decline amidst the global boom. The UN also projects that up to two million people will migrate from poor to rich countries every year until 2050 with around 1.6 million coming to Europe.
“Demographic Destinies” becomes “Demographic Shifts“. “Economic Turbulence” becomes “Economic Power Shifts“… and a significantly large part is just plain ‘cut-and-pasted’. A few words are removed and there’s well over a page writing that is pretty much verbatim. You can see content reposted on pages 73 to about 78. In case you’re wondering, the ‘The Shape of Jobs to Come‘ study was conducted in August 12th-21st 2009 – and the article is dated June 18th, 2009, and as I said, the book in 2008.
Gimpy of Gimpy’s blog has contacted Talwar on some other research cited in the report, and you can head to their site for more detail. You can also cast an eye on how questions are also being posed on whether (as Evidence Matters documents) a report that also references Wikipedia and HowStuffWorks is meant to be seen as a… reliable document about the future of young people? Endorsed by the likes of Gordon Brown and Lord Drayson?
Either way, I hope you check out those sites, particularly if you’re a resident of the UK and question as Holford Watch does as to whether ‘promoting bad research in the name of science communication is likely to be counterproductive’.
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yet more copied and pasted text? I’ll put a link to this on 10minus9!
Thanks for the mention,
James
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