STANFORD UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF MEDICINE

STANFORD MEDICAL CENTER
PALO ALTO, CALIFORNIA 94304

DEPARTMENT OF GENETICS November 22, 1968 Area Code 415
321-1200
To: National Advisory Mental Health Council
From: Joshua Lederberg

I share with all of you, to a greater or lesser degree, a sense of exasperation
about the strikingly uneven standards of rigor applied to projects in different
disciplines and by different study sections. There are indeed arguments pro
and con this heterogeneity of standards which I will not take time to summarize
now. The Council has been understandably reluctant to interfere aggressively
with the conclusions of individual study sections.

Rather than take up too much time during Council review to attempt to influence
your approval of questionable items, I intend to rely on a more oblique approach
which I explain here in order not to have to repeat it case after case. At the
very least the discrepant approaches taken in different fields ought to be known
to members of the more critical and rigorous study sections. I will therefore
suggest that while aecepting the recommendations made by the IRG for certain
applications, that the further step be taken of distributing certain of these to
the other IRGs for their information and possible criticism. This will, I believe,
be an important channel of intercommunication between these IRGs and, I am con-
fident, will add a certain weight of legitimate criticism in those cases that
most urgently require it.

My shorthand for this recommendation will be approval with notice to other IRGs.

LT. J. P, KENNEDY, JR. LABORATORIES FOR MOLECULAR MEDICINE, DEDICATED TO RESEARCH IN MENTAL RETARDATION
MOLECULAR BIOLOGY HEREDITY NEUROBIOLOGY DEVELOPMENTAL MEDICINE