What's interesting about Simons and RenTec is that a _lot_ the people involved are genuinely first rate scientists. And I don't mean econ Nobel laureates, like at LTCM, I mean the kind of people who'd have joined the Manhattan project 50 years earlier. That fact, together with the quality of Medallion's returns, makes people wonder if they really found something.

FWIW, I don't believe this myself. But that's where the interest comes from.