Editorial peer review

To the Editor: Your description of the peer-review process at the Journal (Sept. 21 issue)* deals superficially with the issue of blinding reviewers to authorship. The statement that “most manuscripts contain within them some ineradicable clues to authorship” is unsubstantiated. This issue could easily be studied quantitatively. There is justification for such an effort. We all seek to avoid bias, whether intentional or inadvertent, in each step of a scientific investigation — up to and including publication of the results. The burden of proof is on those who argue in favor of providing reviewers with authors' names, since it is.