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FIFTEEN Meritocracy: Selection of Observers from the Research Community— Balancing Service and the Pursuit of Science: Research by STScI Staff— My Forays into Research and the Politics of Science—Hubble in Its Splendor— Getting Away from the Past: From STScI to the European Southern Observatory Science at the Space Telescope Science Institute 260 Meritocracy: Selection of Observers from the Research Community In the previous two chapters I have emphasized the aspects of STScI that had to do with service to the research community. Just as important to the scienti fic staff was the opportunity to work in an environment where science was actually being done and that provided the intellectual stimulation conducive to learning. We were very much helped by the institute’s having become a nexus for scientific encounters. Time allocation for Hubble was the prerogative of the STScI director, but the director in turn followed the advice of the Time Allocation Committee with few exceptions.Use of the director’s discretionary time ultimately had to be justified to the Space Telescope Institute Council and never amounted to more than 1 percent of the total available observing time. A large number of scientists were involved in the work of the Time Allocation Committee and its several subcommittees, so that the committee did not take on the aura of an upper-caste clique. The composition of the committees involved in reviewing the proposals for observations read like a who’s who of astronomy. We made sure that the best scientists in the world in each subfield would act as reviewers,without re- gard to nationality or institutional affiliation.This approach resulted in an extremely fair selection system, which was essential, given that only one out of every seven proposals could be granted observing time.The lack of bias on the part of the Hubble Time Allocation Committee is demonstrated by its allocation of up to 25 percent of the available observing time to European astronomers , even though the European Space Agency’s contribution“entitled” them to only 15 percent of the viewing time.This drive for scientific excellence rather than “juste retour” was an important factor in the success of Hubble. Literally hundreds of astronomers came to STScI because of their work on various committees and study groups or for purely scientific reasons. Many of them gave formal or informal seminars, which were organized by Academic Affairs. The STScI staff flourished in a setting alive with activity and intellectual stimulation. Little direction was given to the Hubble Time Allocation Committee except in a broad policy sense. With the advice of the STScI scientific staff, the deputy director and I had organized the committee into several subdiscipline groups,so that the considerable number of proposals could be handled more efficiently. Each group had at its disposal a fraction of the available observing time. At the beginning of the proposal process, this fraction was set in rough proportion to the number of proposals received in a given subdiscipline . However, we wanted to allow for the ratios to change with time as scientific interests shifted. We adopted a suggestion by Dick McCray of Colorado University on how to compare apples and oranges. For most proposals , it was immediately obvious which were very good and which very poor. The good ones were accepted and the poor ones rejected quickly. Then there was always a zone in the middle, from which proposals were chosen according to a cutoff line. The total number of proposals accepted could be affected by changing the cutoff line. This was done by a vote from the chairs of the subdiscipline groups during each proposal cycle, on a program-by-program basis. It turned out that the votes would easily converge: a good planetary program, for instance, was preferable to a bad stellar astronomy one—even in the opinion of a stellar astronomer. Another policy issue was the ratio among long, medium, and short observations . In the Einstein program, we had decided that an equal-time distribution among the three categories was a good compromise between elitism and populism, provided the ratio of the observing times was set to 10. Thus for that program there were three observations lasting 106 sec, thirty of 105 sec, and three hundred of 104 sec. After discussion with the Space Telescope Advisory Committee, a similar approach was adopted for Hubble. Science at STScI 261 [3.143.228.40] Project MUSE (2024-04-26 15:53 GMT...

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