ee

September 24, 1968

Dr. Stanley Yolles

National Institute of Mental Health
5454 Wisconsin Avenue

Chevy Chase, Maryland

Dear Stan:

I am very much heartened by the action that the council did finally adopt
with respect to amplifying the information given to applicants. I feel
even more strongly that we have to proceed definitely but cautiously to be
sure that we end up with a workable and useful policy.

One of the commentators attempted to draw an analogy between the secret
deliberations of a trial jury of 'peers'’ and the actions of a study sec-~
tion. I hope I was able to give adequate emphasis to the vital distinc~
tion, mainly that the jury can only weigh testimony which is given accord-
ing to very carefully drawn rules of evidence that do provide for cross-
examination and rebuttal.

I should have introduced a much more obvious analogy and one that may be

a reasonable base on which to work for the development of the grants
policy, namely the generally adopted system of review of papers for publi-
cation in a journal. Even this system has sometimes been attacked as
being too secret, but it is certainly far more open and gives more in-
formation to disappointed authors than the present system now gives to
disappointed grant applicants. On the whole, there probably is the right
spread of policies among different journals and a reasonably appropriate
central trend towards protecting the anonymity of the more queasy review-
ers, though sometimes even allowing their names to be presented to authors,
and yet giving the author the fullest possible information of the grounds
on which a journal has acted in accepting or rejecting his contribution.

I would also stress the very flexible techniques that have been developed
to allow an author to have his paper conditionally accepted and to permit
hin with the least loss of time to make esaential corrections that may be
clearly required for the paper to be a contribution worth reading. There
may be even some literature and certainly considerable experience in the
coldective history of editorial function that might be worthwhile to look
at, at least briefly, in considering policies in respect to grants.

Sincerely,

Joshua Lederberg
Professor of Geneéics
JL: ih

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