While FAS will be, at least at the outset, less involved in the Broad Institute than HMS, these scientists said they would have expected to play a role in considering a commitment of the magnitude required by the institute.

“The overall sense in my department [Molecular and Cellular Biology] is that very little opinion was recruited from the people whose expertise is in this area,” said Tarr Professor of Molecular and Cellular Biology Markus Meister. “It seemed like a lot of secret negotiations were going on before anything scientific was discussed with the Faculty.”

Meister and others said they were frustrated to learn of the proposal, pushed by Lander as early as a year and a half ago, from colleagues at other schools.

“Essentially all FAS faculty were either ignorant or misinformed,” said Professor of Physics Daniel S. Fisher.

According to Fisher, two committees that were supposed to review the proposal—a University-wide committee on computational biology and a committee convened specifically about this project—were kept almost entirely in the dark and did not meet on the proposal more than a couple of times.

And when Lander did meet with a group of scientists including some from FAS, he was not well received.

“There was no detail [to the proposal]—a lot of hype and buzzwords,” Meister said. “This is where many of my colleagues lost it.”

Lee Professor of Molecular and Cellular Biology Thomas P. Maniatis criticized the heavy-handed approach of the central administration.

“The decision was made by the president,” he said. “There was no serious consultation.”

Summers and Hyman said after the press conference that they had been as consultative as circumstances allowed, and that a variety of ad hoc groups had discussed the Broad plan.

But these FAS scientists said that they continue to have questions about aspects of the institute’s mission and the allocation of resources to it.

Maniatis said it was worrisome that the institute’s leaders were still light on specifics.

And the “big science” approach, he and others said, is one that not everyone supports.

“It’s naive to think that simply collecting large amounts of information will lead to fundamental breakthrough,” Maniatis said. “It’s not a very effective way of organizing research.”

“There’s some concern that a lot of attention would be diverted to multi-million dollar projects while there is penny-pinching at the level of smaller projects,” Meister said.