Interesting to see this resurface after it died yesterday. Dang working his magic again.<p>What I find most frustrating about this story is that the panelist recognises that whole process is not able to determine which grants should be funded (basically they are all good), yet he still continues to try and do so. If you can’t tell which of the good grants is better than the other just put all the good grants into a lottery and fund as many as you can - every other option is worse.<p>Edit. I should add that my experience of being on committees like this is that excluding yourself when you have a conflict is a highly effective way of getting your grant funded. The people left in the room can hardly decide to not fund you to your face when you come back into the room. This is why the competition to get onto these committees is so great despite them being very laborious.