Forty signs of rain - Kim Stanley Robinson [48]
“Keeps people working.”
On the savannah a view like this would have come from a high outcrop, where the troop would be resting in relative safety, surveying everything important in their lives. In the realm of grooming, of chatter, of dominance conflicts. Perfect, in other words, for a grant proposal evaluation panel, which in essence was one of the most ancient of discussions: whom do we let in, whom do we kick out? A basic troop economy, of social credit, of access to food and mates—everything measured and exchanged in deeds good and bad—yes—it was another game of prisoners’ dilemma. They never ended.
Frank liked this one. It was very nuanced compared to most of them, and one of the few still outside the world of money. Anonymous peer-review—unpaid labor—a scandal!
But science didn’t work like capitalism. That was the rub, that was one of the rubs in the general dysfunction of the world. Capitalism ruled, but money was too simplistic and inadequate a measure of the wealth that science generated. In science, one built up over the course of a career a fund of “scientific credit,” by giving work to the system in a way that could seem altruistic. People remembered what you gave, and later on there were various forms of return on the gift—jobs, labs. In that sense a good investment for the individual, but in the form of a gift to the group. It was the non zero-sum game that prisoners’ dilemma could become if everyone played by the strategies of always generous, or, better, firm but fair. That was one of the things science was—a place that one entered by agreeing to hold to the strategies of cooperation, to maximize the total return of the game.
In theory that was true. It was also the usual troop of primates. There was a lot of tit for tat. Defections happened. Everyone was jockeying for a lab of their own, or any project of their own. As long as that was generating enough income for a comfortable physical existence for oneself and one’s family, then one had reached the optimal human state. Having money beyond that was unnecessary, and usually involved a descent into the world of hassle and stupidity. That was what greed got you. So there was in science a sufficiency of means, and an achievable limit to one’s goals, that kept it tightly aligned with the brain’s deepest savannah values. A scientist wanted the same things out of life as an Australopithecus; and here they were.
Thus Frank surveyed the panelists milling about the room with a rare degree of happiness. “Let’s get started.”
They sat down, putting laptops and coffee cups beside the computer consoles built into the tabletop. These allowed the panelists to see a spreadsheet page for each proposal in turn, displaying their grades and comments. This particular group all knew the drill. Some of them had met before, more had read one another’s work.
There were eight of them sitting around the long cluttered conference table.
Dr. Frank Vanderwal, moderator, NSF (on leave from University of California, San Diego, Department of Bioinformatics).
Dr. Nigel Pritchard, Georgia Institute of Technology, Computer Sciences.
Dr. Alice Freundlich, Harvard University, Department of Biochemistry.
Dr. Habib Ndina, University of Virginia Medical School.
Dr. Stuart Thornton, University of Maryland, College Park, Genomics Department.
Dr. Francesca Taolini, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Center for Biocomputational Studies.
Dr. Jerome Frenkel, University of Pennsylvania, Department of Genomics.
Dr. Yao Lee, Cambridge University (visiting GWU’s Department of Microbiology).
Frank made his usual introductory remarks and then said, “We’ve got a lot of them to go through this time. I’m sorry it’s so many, but that’s what we’ve received. I’m sure we’ll hack our way through them all if we keep on track. Let’s start with the fifteen-minutes-per-jacket drill, and see if we can get twelve or even fourteen done before lunch. Sound good?”
Everyone nodded and tapped away, calling up the first one.
“Oh, and before we start, let’s have