GeminiFocus 2015 Year in Review | Page 54

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 &