(MONEY Magazine) – If senior writer Andrea Rock had any doubts about the relevance of the story she was working on, they evaporated on Feb. 11. That afternoon, Andrea noticed that the pills her husband had picked up at their local drugstore looked different--they were purple instead of blue and seemed a bit larger than usual. A call to the pharmacist confirmed her suspicion: The prescription had been misfilled, with a dosage 50% higher than it should have been. The pharmacist tried to apologize: "I was working a 12-hour shift," she explained, "and the computers were down. Things backed up."

Andrea's story, "Prescription for Trouble," which begins on page 114, focuses on the critical question of just how much you can trust your pharmacist. The realities of an increasingly competitive drugstore marketplace have put new pressures on pharmacists, who are sometimes called on to fill upwards of 25 prescriptions an hour. Not only pharmacists but also state regulators claim that pressure leads to mistakes--the kinds that can, on occasion, pose devastating risks. Peggie Hundley knows this all too well: As Andrea relates in her article, Hundley's seven-year-old daughter Gabrielle suffered brain damage when her prescription for Ritalin was filled instead with a drug that lowers diabetics' blood sugar, according to arguments presented by her attorney in a lawsuit the Hundleys won last year. What's more, part of a pharmacist's job is to spot harmful interactions among multiple prescriptions, but some pharmacists are too rushed or ill-informed to handle that burden. (Another member of the MONEY staff discovered during the reporting of this story that combining two drugs she had been taking together--the antihistamine Hismanal and the antibiotic Biaxin--significantly increases the chances of heart arrhythmia. "I had no idea," she says.)

Knowing whom to trust and how much to trust them is at the heart of many personal-finance decisions. This month's cover story, "Stocks or Funds" (page 93), has at its core the question of how much you can trust a mutual fund manager--and what you are paying for that privilege. Our look at the complications of home renovation projects (page 192) also deals with building a relationship of trust, this time with a contractor.

Our philosophy at MONEY is this: In financial situations, trust needs to be earned, and a wise consumer recognizes that whoever is selling a product or service has his or her own agenda. Sometimes that agenda can be made to work in a consumer's favor--as our analysis of today's cellular-phone deals (page 146) spells out. Other times, as Andrea's pharmacist story explains, it is best to take a defensive posture.

MONEY's Wall Street editor, Michael Sivy, has built up a significant reservoir of trust as editor of our annual Forecast issue and, for the past five years, author of our back-page column. That's why we're hoping readers won't be disturbed that we've moved Michael's column from the back page up into the front of the magazine, as an anchor to our investment coverage. This brings together all of our investment columns, a process we began last month when we relocated Money Pro.

This move also creates the opportunity for us to introduce a new columnist to our readers: editor-at-large Jean Sherman Chatzky, a regular commentator on NBC's Today show, author of The Rich and Famous Money Book and a longtime magazine writer on personal-finance topics from estate planning to credit cards, home-equity loans to asset allocation. In her first column, which we are calling Money Talk, Jean explains how new procedures by insurers may be raising your auto and homeowner rates because of mistakes in your credit report--and how a clean credit report might actually counteract the effects of that second speeding ticket.

I'd like to thank all of you who responded with comments on my first issue as managing editor of MONEY last month. My family and I all appreciated the warm welcome. I hope you will continue to share your thoughts and ideas. You can write me at MONEY Magazine, Time & Life Building, Rockefeller Center, New York, N.Y. 10020. Or e-mail me at managing_editor@moneymail.com. Thanks again.

ROBERT SAFIAN Managing Editor