[Letter to Colleagues from Peter Duesberg]

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY

BERKELEY * DAVIS * IRVINE * LOS ANGELES * RIVERSIDE * SAN DIEGO * SAN FRANCISCO o SANTA BARBARA * SANTA CRUZ
Department of Molecular and Cell Biology
January 12, 1993 clo Stanley/Donner Administrative Services Unit
229 Stanley Hall
Berkeley, CA 94720
FAX: [phone]
Council of the National Academy of Sciences
attn: Kenneth Fulton
Room 146
2101 Constitution Ave., N.W.
Washington, D.C. 20418
Dear Colleagues,
I am writing to the Council to appeal the decision of the Proceedings
editor Dr. Lawrence Bogorad to exclude my paper, "The Role of Drugs in
AIDS," from publication in the Proceedings of our Academy.
The paper was originally contributed by myself to the Proceedings on
March 21, 1991, after it had received four favorable reviews from colleagues
selected by myself (three more than requested by the Proceedings for
submission of a paper by a member), including Howard Green, Robert RootBernstein, Walter Gilbert, and Harry Rubin. Bogorad rejected the paper on
May 13, 1991, based on the advice of four anonymous reviewers of his choice.
He refused to consider the revised version of my paper but, on June 18, 1991,
he accepted my proposal to have my paper resubmitted by another member of
the Academy, after appropriate review by experts.
Dr. Harry Rubin agreed to communicate my paper and submitted it in
October 1991 with four expert reviews that each recommended publication.
Bogorad entirely ignored the opinions of Rubin and the four reviewers
selected by him, and again submitted the paper to three anonymous
reviewers of his choice.
On the basis of these three reviewers' opinions, Bogorad again rejected
my paper on December 4, 1991. In his letter, he never even acknowledged the
review efforts of Rubin and his four experts. However, Bogorad did provide
the comments of Rubin's reviewers to Bogorad's own chosen reviewers.
In his rejection letter of December 4, Bogorad stated that "the problem
does not appear to be the presence of a few correctable errors, misquotes, etc.,

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