that they are doing so, however. As an English professor notes, “intu-
ition and flair” play important roles in judging excellence, as does
“just having a sort of eye for it.” In many cases, these more evanes-
cent criteria—the presence of “elegance,” the ability to generate “ex-
citement,” a display of cultural capital—all combine to create a sense
that an applicant is (or has) the “it” that everyone is looking for.
Such considerations influence the signaling process as well as collec-
tive definitions of what is “hot.” A historian, chair of a panel, recog-
nizes the influence of such evanescent qualities. Rather than viewing
their use as idiosyncratic or capricious, and thus as incompatible
with making fair decisions, he sees panelists’ application of evanes-
cent criteria as an essential part of identifying true excellence:
There are these intuitive aspects to it, and at the same time, I be-
lieve we’re doing social science. These aspects have aesthetic sides
to them, like “This is a very elegant or striking proposal.” This is
an important part of the individual and group processes. That
doesn’t mean that...wedon’thavestandards. I think that those
two things can go together quite well, especially if you’re looking
for things that are just a little bit outside the norm. You’re actually
looking for some of those qualities in the spark, the godlike quali-
ties in the proposal.These informal criteria appear to be used equally by panelists
across the three disciplinary clusters. Even scholars from disciplines
that view subjectivity as corrupting and as a source of bias (such as
economists) show no special reluctance to judge who has “it” and
who does not. Similarly, humanists are not less likely to factor in
moral considerations. Instead, all panelists reference these informal
criteria throughout their accounts of the deliberations. And recourse
to these criteria does not appear to be limited only to times when re-
liance on formal standards has resulted in deadlocks. Panel members
188 / Recognizing Various Kinds of Excellence