Re: Astro Boy
OK, yes, but joking aside: Department chairs are not necessarily particularly gifted researchers or theorists. A healthy academic department selects a chair1 based on administrative qualities such as management skills, organization, diplomatic skills, fairness (one hopes), and so forth.
Often "department chair" means "tenured faculty member who was seen as the least-bad compromise by enough of the faculty and hasn't yet pissed off the dean too much". Or, of course, "dean's toady", which is at least as common.
Loeb's other non-research qualifications are more significant, and even those should take a back seat to his actual research publication and presentation history, and how those have been received by the field.
And all of that, still, is hardly a reliable indicator. For exhibit A I give you Linus Pauling. Good chemist, lousy nutritionist.
1In the US, at least, the process for this varies by university and college, but is likely to be complicated and fraught. But usually the department members (at least the tenure-stream faculty, though at sensible institutions fixed-term faculty, staff, and even those scum graduate students may have some influence) get to at least vet candidates and create the final list of options.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
