The Mail ACID REPLY

To the Editors of the CRIMSON:

I regret to inform you that your front page article, "Stuff of Life..." fails to achieve a passing grade. Your reporter neither did his homework nor understood what I told him over the phone on Sunday. First as to homework, your reporter had access to Walter Sullivan's article in the N.Y. Times of Nov. 6, and he mentioned having seen it. Even a casual reading of this article would have avoided must of the errors. Secondly, a press release on formic acid dated Nov. 6 was on the AP and UP wires. Finally, an I.A.U. Circular was issued last week which contained the technical details of the formic acid discovery. Your reporter failed to read or failed to understand any of these.

Allow me to correct a few of the more blatant errors. First methyl alcohol (not ethyl alcohol) has been found toward the galactic center. The group responsible for this discovery includes Carl A. Gottlieb and A. E. Lilley of Harvard and H. E. Radford of the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory. Dr. Radford supervised the all-important measurements of the laboratory frequencies. The formic acid discovery was made by a group headed by B. Zuckerman of the University of Maryland and including Gottlieb and Radford.

The measurement was, of course, a radio astronomical measurement (i.e., we just listened) not a radar measurement. The discoveries were certainly not made "by bouncing radio waves off the clouds and analyzing the returning waves," as your reporter stated.