Lin-sanity is the new prism through which we must view all?

Jonah Lehrer has a post up which reviews the now commonly understood wisdom that one Jeremy Lin is a fantastic basketball talent that was overlooked by the system.

Jeremy Lin is a reminder that similar problems almost certainly apply to the NBA, which is why we shouldn’t be so surprised that a benchwarmer cut from multiple teams is quickly becoming a star. There is talent everywhere. We just don’t know how to find it.

As you know, I am of the opinion that our current focus on Glamour Magazine publication success in science is similarly leading us to miss a lot of talent that would perhaps do even better than many selected by the Glamour Gaze.

Discuss.

NIGMS Posts FY2011 Funding Outcome

Despite a recent bobble of a perfectly reasonable question from Comrade PhysioProf by new NIGMS Director Judith Greenberg, NIGMS continues to be our favorite IC on the grant geekery front because they post their funding outcome data.

The latest info is posted here and I’ve taken the liberty of grabbing the first figure. It depicts the competing R01/equivalent applications by priority score that emerged from the initial review and differentiates the ones that they funded versus the ones that they did not. I like these depictions because you can see the rarity of “skips” (those apps which are not funded despite being scored within the range of nearly certain funding and the way “exceptions” (aka “pickups”) still have some relationship to score. Furthermore, you can maybe look across time and see whether the sharpness of the dropoff in chances of getting picked up as you step up away from the apparent payline (the point under which virtually everything gets funded) has changed. This latter might indicate the degree to which Program is meddling with the initial priority rankings.