Mark Humphries
Aug 28, 2017 · 1 min read

Thanks! And yes, I did gloss over the “messy middle” idea. Partly for streamlining the piece, partly because I don’t know of any hard evidence. Anecdotally, I fully agree: committees for grants and conferences (and hiring) do seem to agree on both the brilliant and the terrible, leaving everything else in the middle.

So while I believe that both a streamlined application process and an element of selection by lottery are necessary to avoid the current absurd time-sink for all parties, I was intentionally a little vague on what form that lottery would take. As you say, it could well be that a lottery is best applied to the “messy middle”.

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    Mark Humphries

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    Uses his brain to understand brains. Is that possible? Neuroscience: https://humphries-lab.org