June 3, 1968

Dr. Charles B. Wilkinson

Department of Peychiatry

Kenseas City Division, School of Medicine
University of Missouri

600 East 22nd Street

Kansas City, Miseouri 64108

Dear Dr. Wilkinson:

I hope you will forgive me for communicating a comment based on your grant
application. It has to do with the sociological significance of looting.
I had already put together a few paragraphs intended for a column, which
may Or may not come to be completed, when I saw an account in ae recent
issue of Trans-Action which purporte to give a completely different sig-
nificance to the looting phenowenen. If you have a chance to see this
before we meet shortly, I would be interested in your views in the matter.

Your application comments that the "intensification" hypothesis was not
taken up by the Kerner report. Far from it, I have the impression that

the great majority of the participants in, for example, Watts had been
shown to be quite typical of the entire community, which would appear to

be in direct contradiction to your present proposal. Are those data simply
wrong, or can they be reconcilable with findings that you might adduce in
support of "intensification"?

(Vas MIN TIM

a

Let me say before you do that I hardly regard myself as an expert on any |
of these matters. On the contrary, I am fascinatéd by the possibility of
applying scientific methodology to answering such difficult kinds of ques-
tions, and would be grateful for illumination wherever I can find it.

Sincerely yours,

Joshua Lederberg
Professor of Genetics