The Irish Climate Analysis and Research Unit(s) based in Maynooth carries the facetious name Icarus. Whose idea it was we don’t know, but it smacks of a certain smugness.

Icarus was established was established, “in order to improve our scientific understanding of climate change and its impact”. Let’s have a look at how much actual climate research they published in 2011. You might imagine that it should be quite a bit. Their website states there are ten members of staff, and twelve post-graduate fellows. Twenty-two in all.

By their own website, the answer is an unexciting six items. It get’s even less exciting however, because of the six cited publications, some are only submitted for publication not published. Most of these were joint publications. So in fact, according to their website only seven authors in total produced research. It’s not like they were busy talking. In 2011, the site claims they had zero climate conferences.

Now if all this smacks of an out-of-date website, then guess again. Their 2011/2012 M.Sc. literature tells the reader to get the most up-to-date information from the website. And the news section runs right up to December 2011. So the website seems to be in date.Of course it has a moribund look and feel (e.g. no social media interfaces), so for all the casual reader knows, Icarus could be as dead as a dodo.

Given that NUI Maynooth, “is committed to being a first class research-led centre of learning and academic discovery”, all this is a little disappointing. If the researchers have produced more work, we the public who fund them deserve to know about it. And if they haven’t, then either a) they are under performing or b) they are underfunded.

Academics always claim to be underfunded, and in this case it’s probably true (Irish government climate research priorities are no secret), but the amount of published research, even if once accorded it a high quality rating, seems underwhelming. In any event, the public interface to Icarus is appalling. Why trust them with more money if they can’t even get it together on something as simple as a website?

It doesn’t take funding to change this. It just takes a little less smugness, and a few hours work.Twenty-two people should be able to manage that.