820 LETTERS TO EDITOR

concurrence, and their familial correlates). The article previous (Reyet al., 1988) to Lahey et aI.'s does cite these two papers. Admittedly,Rey lives in nearby Australia and may have a heightened awarenessto New Zealand papers, but I do not accept that only articles stamped"Made in U.S.A." deserve recognition.

I want to ask: I. Why, since Lahey et aI.'s (1988) paper was accepted3 months after the appearance of our articles, did Lahey et aI. notinclude them as did Rey et aI.? 2. Why did the reviewers not drawthe attention ofLahey et aI. to our two articles? 3. Why did the editor,who alone has a conspectus on articles published and about to bepublished, not draw the attention of Lahey et aI. to our two articles?4. Why was our review allowed to miss at least one article (Shapiroand Garfinkle, November 1986, pp. 809-819), which appeared whileours was awaiting publication? The Editor must have known that ourarticles should have included a citation to this paper?

All this may seem to be nitpicking, but if the Journal can't evenmaintain some degree of continuity with its own articles, what hopeis there for so doing across all the journals in child psychiatry?

REFERENCES

Lahey, B. 8., Piacentini, J. C, McBurnett, K., Stone, P., Hartdagen,S. & Hynd, G. (1988), Psychopathology in the parents of childrenwith conduct disorder and hyperactivity. J. Am. Acad. Child Ado­lese. Psychiatry, 27:163-170.

Reeves, J. C, Werry, J. S., Elkind, G. S. & Zametkin, A. (1987),Attention deficit, conduct, oppositional, and anxiety disorders inchildren: II. J. Am. Acad. Child Adolesc. Psychiatry, 26:144-155.

Rey, J. M., Bashir, M. R., Schwarz, M., Richards, I. N., Plapp, J. M.& Stewart, G. W. (1988), Oppositional disorder, fact or fiction? J.Am. Acad. Child Adolesc. Psychiatry, 27:157-162.

Werry, J. S., Reeves, J. C & Elkind, G. S. (1987), Attention deficit,conduct, oppositional, and anxiety disorders in children: I. J. Am.Acad. Child Adolesc. Psychiatry, 26:127-132.

John S. Werry, M.D.Professor of Psychiatry

University of AucklandAuckland, New Zealand

The Editor Comments:

John Werry speaks of his work with justifiable pride-bricks inthe slowly-rising edifice of knowledge. All bricks submitted for ouredifice of knowledge are reviewed by expert masons for size, color,and consistency. His are uniformly sturdy, somewhat variable in size,and always bright in color!

J.McD.

Dr. Lahey Replies:

I read John Werry's Letter to the Editor a few days after watchingour town's Fourth of July fireworks. I want to thank John Werry forthe delightful reprise-no one's prose packs so much gunpowder! Ifind myself in complete agreement with Professor Werry's mainassertion. It is certainly helpful for authors to cite all relevant articlesby other laboratories, and editors should call the attention of authorsto as yet unpublished articles.

The reviewersof"Psychopathology in the Parents of Children withConduct Disorder and Hyperactivity" (Lahey et aI. 1988)did, in fact,call my attention to the Werry papers and a relevant paper by JosephBiederman's research group that was in press at the time my manu­script was written. Thus, it is not the case that Professor Werry'spapers were not cited due to laxity on the part of the various editors,but because I chose not to cite them.

I did not cite the review article because I felt that we had coveredmuch the same ground and, as usual, I was being urged to reduce thelength of my manuscript. I did not cite their empirical study for a

dilTerentreason, however. Although Reeves et aI. (1988) also reportedthat the fathers of children with both conduct disorder and attentiondeficit-hyperactivity manifested antisocial personality and alcoholismmore frequently than the fathers of children with attention deficit­hyperactivity alone or anxiety disorders, they combined the diagnosesof oppositional disorder and conduct disorder and, more importantly,a single interviewer gave diagnoses to both the children and theirfathers. Rather than cite Reeves et aI. and then state that one cannotconsider their findings to corroborate our own because the diagnosesof children and parents were not blind to the results of the other, Ichose not to cite them at all. I stand by my methodological conserv­atism, but in retrospect, it may have been better to have cited andcriticized Reeves et aI.

No one values the research or friendship of John Werry more thanI. I regret criticizing his work in print, but I do not want others totake the blame for a decision that was mine. I most sincerely hopethat he was jesting when he implied that the failure to cite his workwas based to any degree on a bias against work done outside theUnited States. There is no doubt in my mind that the current upsurgein the quality of research in childhood psychopathology owes at leastas much to the influence of researchers from outside the United Statesas within.

REFERENCES

Lahey, B. B., Piacentini, J. C, McBurnett, K., Stone, P., Hartdagen,S. & Hynd, G. (1988), Psychopathology in the parents of childrenwith conduct disorder and hyperactivity. J. Am. Acad. Child Ado­lese. Psychiatry, 27:163-170.

Reeves, J. C, Werry, J. S., Elkind, G. S. & Zarnetkin, A. (1987),Attention deficit, conduct, oppositional, and anxiety disorders inchildren: II. J. Am. Acad. Child Adolesc. Psychiatry, 26:144-155.

Benjamin B. Lahey, Ph.D.Department of Psychology

University of GeorgiaAthens, Georgia

Development of Special Sections

To the Editor:

Many months ago, a colleague of mine was invited by your Journalto edit a section of a future issue devoted to adolescents. This heproceeded to do, assembling a small number of internationally rec­ognized experts to write papers on their particular areas of expertise.In due course, the papers were brought together and sent to yourJournal. A manuscript from myself devoted to the hospital andresidential treatment of severely disturbed adolescents was amongthem.

To my (and others') amazement, after a definitive invitation, thepapers, and therefore the entire proposed section, were rejected!Alongwith the manuscripts that were returned to my colleague were variouseditorial comments. The ones devoted to my particular manuscriptwere appalling-they were petty, niggling, uninformed, and eveninsulting. I was disgusted.

There is something wrong with a publication that solicits materialfrom acknowledged authorities, then proceeds to reject them alongwith inane editorial comments by pompously pedantic self-appointedreviewers of lesser evident stature or knowledge than the writerswhose work they are pleased to excoriate. This has never happenedto me personally before, and you can bet I'll never submit anythingto your publication in the future.

Ugh!

Donald 8. Rinsley, M.D., F.R.S.H. (Lond.)Clinical Professor of Psychiatry

University of Kansas School of MedicineKansas City, Kansas