theory and data. This is a topic of concern for roughly half of all re-
spondents, but nearly three-quarters of the social scientists rank it as
important (as compared to less than half of the humanists). It also
figures prominently in graduate training in the social sciences. A his-
torian of China provides a good description of the importance of the
alignment between theory and data when she explains that combin-
ing several types of evidence helps produce a solid proposal. Draw-
ing an analogy with crafting a table, she says, “The size of the table
and the sturdiness of the table depend on how many legs [it has] and
where they’re placed...Thetable with one leg that is a broad gener-
alization with one little foundation doesn’t work. Four solid founda-
tions, well, that’s solid.” A political scientist’s account of the strongest
proposal focuses on the articulation between theory and method:
“[The applicant] had a clear sense of how to use a case to address
theory. He took us through some of the main theories [of genocide]
and showed how the Rwanda case...didn’t confirm them in any
straightforward way. And used that as a basis for establishing both,
one, [that this was a] clear puzzle, [a] clear question...[and two,]
whatitwas...obviously a case of. He inserted a comparative dimen-
sion into it in a way that was pretty ingenious, I thought, looking at
regional variations.”
Panelists wax poetic—evoking a language of beauty and apprecia-
tion—in describing proposals that reach perfect articulation be-
tween the research question, the theory informing the research, the
method proposed, and the evidence mobilized to answer the ques-
tion. This is where one can see craft at its best. Thus an economist
provides this appreciative description of his favorite proposal, writ-
ten by a political philosopher: “It’s very rare that you find someone
that can go from the very abstract political philosophy kind of litera-
ture and also design a good feasible empirical social science proposal
to actually study how [international philanthropic organizations]
work.” In assessing how applicants achieve this ideal alignment, some
182 / Recognizing Various Kinds of Excellence