Peggy Bulger of Library of Congress on Lashon hora by Dubner & Levitt in January 8, 2006 New York Times Magazine

Hoodwinked?
Published: January 22, 2006

Stephen J. Dubner and Steven D. Levitt are holding Stetson Kennedy responsible for the inadequacies of their own research (Freakonomics, Jan. 8). It's preposterous.

I have worked with Stetson Kennedy for more than 30 years, conducting almost 100 in-depth interviews with both Kennedy and his contemporaries. Your writers use one footnote from my dissertation as ''evidence,'' yet Dubner admitted to me that they never read the whole thing. This is ''data''? What is the smoking gun here?

Peggy A. Bulger

Takoma Park, Md.