JOHN P. MORGAN MD

PROFESSOR OF PHARMACOLOGY

CUNY Medical School
Tel. 212-650-8255
138^th ST. and Convent Ave. Facsimile 212-650-7751
New York City, NY 10031
E-mail drjpm@med.cuny.edu

3 December 2000

Prof. H.G. Levine
@hereinstead.com

Dear Harry,

On Sunday, 12 November, John Horgan published in the NY Times Book Review, a skilled analysis of a recent controversial book on social anthropology. In his review of Darkness in El Dorado, Horgan performs his usual feat of analyzing science so that a non-technical reader can understand and construct a context for arguments, controversy and opposing viewpoints. He describes John Tierney's belief that respected anthropologists had done enormous harm to the Yanomami people of South America by being exploitative and dishonest in their research. Among other accusations, Tierney states that Napoleon Chagnon used a variety of techniques to provoke aggressive behavior in these people because he had achieved early success by describing their savage and ignoble actions. Horgan describes clearly his initial disbelief that Chagnon and others could have acted so immorally, but then denotes the processes of persuasion and evocation of proof in Tierney's book that convinced him. Horgan also acknowledges the incompleteness of the story and the possibility that Tierney is wrong. There is an openness and modesty in Horgan's writing and an understanding of the polemics of science that has impressed me for years.

I first came to respect Horgan during the time he wrote a monthly column for the Scientific American called "Science and the Citizen "( 1987-1994 ). He interviewed Lynn Zimmer and me regarding the arguments about urine testing in the workplace, before the Supreme Court enabled the testing of federal workers by a dismissive interpretation of the right against suspicion less searches. He agreed with us that the National Institute on Drug Abuse promoted a series of unproven claims which implied that testing would cleanse the workplace of bad acts, accidents, and slovenliness. ( Most of these early claims are well described in Prof. Zimmer's elegant pamphlet written for the ACLU entitled Drug Testing: A Bad Investment). Horgan often quoted me in a 1990 column critical of NIDA's claims.

Soon after Horgan's article appeared, I was called by an old friend, a federal employee who was then working for Michael Walsh, a NIDA scientist leading the campaign to test Federal workers. Like many other government employees who promoted urine testing, Walsh now heads a private drug testing firm. My friend amazed me by asking if I were John Horgan writing with a poorly constructed nom de plume. I laughingly assured her that I was not. I think she was relieved. My efforts to slow the rush to urine monitoring would obviously been more powerful if I controlled such a fine forum as a column in Scientific American. I called John Horgan to warn him that certain dark forces had confused us, but he and I agreed that he had little to fear.

I loved telling the story of my doppelganger John Horgan and I often did. I never anticipated however that anyone else would confuse us. Imagine my surprise when I discovered on a visit to your excellent website, the posting of a Scientific American article entitled, Test Negative: A Look at the "Evidence" Justifying Illicit Drug Tests, attributed to me! Of course, it is John Horgan's ten year-old article that confused Jeanne Tremble and her colleagues. It is obvious that the article was not written by me (John Morgan), because the writer (John Horgan), frequently cites and quotes one of his sources (John Morgan).

I suspect the internet is filled with such faulty attributions and errant citations. I am aware that you actually posted the article from The Schaffer Drug Library, an online source of drug articles which I have found reliable and useful in the past. I can't think of any other important ramifications of this error. But, I hope that you'll consider posting this note near the article which, of course, should be attributed to John Horgan, who is not the actor Paul Horgan, who plays Crocodile Dundee.

Sincerely,

John P. Morgan M.D.