Whatever the explanation, it is inevitable that persons with "less than the best qualifications" do get on review committees. This need not be so bad as Siminovitch would have us believe. He should recognize that, even if we had the "best" on review committees, the process of deciding who is the most deserving of funding is highly error prone. If the committees were simply deciding who had the best track record, this might not be so. But the committees are asked to evaluate ideas. The fact that a process is error prone means that we should not place great confidence in it. This should be taken into account in System design.
The worst solution would be to narrow the funding base, as Siminovitch proposes. This would mean that the "best" projects, by Siminovitch's lights, might fall below the funding cutoff line. Rather, there should be a sliding scale of funding, ...
