Letters.

No Strife At U.S News

I would like to challenge some unnamed sources cited by writer Nicholas Thompson in his story entitled "Playing With Numbers" (September 2000). In his critical assessment of the university and college rankings process at U.S. News & World Report, Mr. Thompson wrote: "according to sources close to the magazine, a bitter internal struggle broke out when it became clear that Caltech was going to come out on top in the late spring of 1999" instead of Ivy League schools that had held the top rankings positions in previous years.

I was the special projects editor at U.S. News at the time and oversaw the rankings.

It is true that a change in the rankings methodology gave more weight to the fact that per-student spending at Caltech was vastly higher than at other schools and which resulted in Caltech becoming the number one school in the rankings done in 1999. But at no point was there any discussion of reworking the data or changing the rankings.

At the time the methodolgy was changed, no one knew which school would come out on top. It's accurate to say that some editors, including me, were surprised at the result. There were a number of questions asked by editors about the change in methodolgy -- why it was done and the technical details of how it was done. However, no editor or writer raised the possibility of redoing the rankings. In fact, the magazine's topmost editor, Stephen Smith, immediately and unhesitatingly made clear from the moment that he heard about the new rankings that they would stand and the publication of them would proceed on schedule.

Perhaps these sources heard about other meetings that were held after the rankings emerged. Those meetings dealt with how we should cover the Caltech story. Those were the only "deliberations" related to those new rankings. And they were as civil as these sessions ever get.

HARRISON RAINIE FORMER SPECIAL PROJECTS EDITOR U.S. News & World Report Mr. Thompson replies:

Many of the people I spoke with do work, or have worked, for U.S. News and did not want their names used. I stand by my reporting and my story absolutely.

More Drug Problems

Although Stephen Pomper raises many significant policy issues concerning the nation's prescription drug review and safety monitoring process ("Drug Rush," May 2000), several of his basic premises are seriously flawed.

* Pomper seems to assume that there is such a thing as absolute safety, when in fact all prescription and over-the-counter...