I cannot understand how people think that trying to evaluate people who are pushing the bounds of human knowledge is anything short of "a clusterfuck." I understand the appeal of metrics and prestige, as they provide some signal in an insanely noisy system, but to think they are perfectly aligned is ludicrous. Are we unwilling to just admit that the process is noisy? Is it really not okay that it is (and that we'll probably never escape this aspect)? Because I can't see us doing good science if we're not.