Does being on a telescope time allocation committee get you a better chance of being awarded observing time ? Yes, says Jane Greaves of Cardiff University (who I do not know) - it boosts your chances by a factor of three. And this doesn't seem to be because being on the TAC gives you better knowledge of how to write a good proposal, because when people stop serving on the TAC, their success rate drops right back down again. They probably don't submit a massively higher number of proposals either, since this is usually a very time-consuming procedure. Could they be motivated to write the best possible proposals while on the TAC but don't care so much afterwards ? I guess, but it doesn't seem likely.
The obvious and most likely inference is that TACs are biased towards serving members. Someone should give a sample of proposals to external members for review and compare their scores with that of the TAC.
https://arxiv.org/pdf/1811.05790.pdf
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