proclaimed expertise, allows us to look for
signs that this is the case.
If anything, it seems that the opposite may
be happening; the lowest scores were given
almost exclusively by reviewers who consider themselves not to be particularly familiar with the subject area of a proposal.
While data from more FT cycles are certainly
needed to show whether this trend persists,
prospective PIs may wish to ensure that their
proposals are accessible to a broad, non-expert audience.
Figure 1.
Mean proposal grade
vs. proposal rank for the
first FT cycle. The vertical
bars show the range of
scores received by each
proposal (on a scale of
0-4), and the dashed
horizontal line indicates
the cutoff score that any
proposal must reach
in order to be awarded
telescope time.
the instructions to emphasize that the need
for a quick response is not paramount. Time
will tell if this works.
Although we don’t yet have a lot of data to
work with, in true astronomer fashion we
haven’t been able to resist the temptation to
start analyzing the numbers we do have. Figure 1, for instance, shows the mean p &