Smart + Nice + Hard Working

Today I started service on a new committee of the National Research Council, one charged with presenting the current state of Discipline Based Educational Research (DBER). We worked hard all day and tonight enjoyed a prix fixe dinner at Poste, a fancy DC restaurant. As we dined, one person remarked that we really ought to have someone on the committee who would take us to task, questioning the assumptions that the entire committee seemed to accept even though we hailed from different academic backgrounds. I wondered whether this was possible. Would a cantankerous naysayer be allowed in? The people who are invited to serve on project committees, and who are later re-invited, are predictably nice--they interact fluidly and productively with other committee members. Sociability is essential, but so is intelligence and a well-developed work ethic. The NRC tends to draw from a small pool. Is it because of cronyism? I don't think so. It may be that satisfying multiple criteria is rarer than most would guess.