tradiction does not affect me very much...Everything is relative in

some ways, but I do believe there are real qualities, which I’m identify-

ing, which are pretty related...Whatrises to the top is cream, but I

am not convinced that all the cream makes it. I do worry about, for

example, what happens to people who for one reason or another don’t

make it to the very best possible graduate program...Mysense is

that in every case you get a high degree of agreement... people will

suppress a very strong outlying opinion, or perhaps briefly and mildly

express it, in order to make the process work.

Historian

A

lmost without exception, the panelists I talked with consider
their deliberations fair and their panel able to identify the top
proposals.^1 Like the economist quoted earlier, the evaluators do
not believe that their panel did a perfect job, but they do maintain
that they identified the best proposals “on average.” They agree that
meritocracy guides the process of selection and that unfettered mar-
ket mechanisms generally determine the outcome of the competi-
tion. Some qualify their views by referring to the “role of chance and
passion” in the process, and some acknowledge that “mistakes are
made.” Overall, however, they are confident that panels succeed in
identifying high-quality proposals, and that peer review “works” as a
mechanism for quality control. As one art historian put it, “I think
on the whole we do a pretty good job of identifying, not individually
but collectively,... quality research that could be considered ‘the
cream.’” This belief resonates with their broader investment in a
“culture of academic excellence” that precludes panelists from fram-
ing the outcome of the deliberations as an expression of cronyism. In
fact, a tradition of not indulging in expressions of self-interest is
one of the reasons that panelists say they enjoy serving on panels
(“officiating as priest” as one of them puts it). “I’m really impressed,”
a historian says, referring to his experience on a panel, “when people

108 / Pragmatic Fairness