There is little doubt that metrics play an increasing role in guiding the decisions we make about many aspects of life, from the schools to which we send our children to the dentist we trust to deliver an implant. But metrics have also begun to subtly influence our view of others and even our own sense of self-worth as they infiltrate the majority of jobs and careers: while sales figures cloud the working lives of those in the retail sector, Ofsted ratings remain the bane of headteachers’ lives.
As a former academic scientist for over 30 years, I am only too aware of the dehumanising consequences metrics can have. Every undergraduate lecture I gave was assessed by 150 medical students for its pace, content and clarity which would be collated into a final numerical value that conveyed how well (or otherwise!) I had done. And when it came to my research outputs, the metrics were even less forgiving, ranging from the amount of funding I had managed to attract each year to the all-important H-index that captured, in a single number, my publication record. Even the influence of individual papers was closely monitored with metrics such as the Impact Factor of the journal in which it was published and the number of citations it had received in the scientific literature. But a new instrument of torture has recently been added to the growing list: known as ‘Altmetrics’ it purports to assess not only the citations a paper attracts, but other measures of impact, such as references on social media, the number of tweets it generates and the number of times it is mentioned in the press. I remember only too well eagerly logging on to Altmetrics a year after I had published what I considered to be one of my best papers in a high impact journal, only to read the damming words ‘0 records of impact’!
There can be few more uncompromising assessments of a person’s worth than to reduce their value to a number, something which I can’t help feeling is the very antithesis of all that counselling and psychotherapy seeks to achieve in helping individuals move from an external ‘locus of evaluation’ dependent on others’ opinions of them, to one that is internal, based on what we know to be true about ourselves. By re-discovering who we truly are, rather than the person metrics suggest us to be, we become more than just a number but an individual with unique talents, abilities, vulnerabilities and aspirations.