If a surgeon doesn’t look like a clean cut surgeon and is still in the business, he must be damn good at the actual business of a surgeon, and probably better than someone who has all the right appearances.
This assumes that both surgeons are evaluated by the same set of criteria (so if one scores lower on something, he probably scores higher on something else). That is not necessarily true.
As a counter-example, imagine hospital A that only hires professional surgeons and pays them high salaries, and hospital B that hires anyone and pays them low salaries. The “surgeon who looks like a butcher” probably works in the hospital B.
This assumes that both surgeons are evaluated by the same set of criteria (so if one scores lower on something, he probably scores higher on something else). That is not necessarily true.
As a counter-example, imagine hospital A that only hires professional surgeons and pays them high salaries, and hospital B that hires anyone and pays them low salaries. The “surgeon who looks like a butcher” probably works in the hospital B.