
Pseudonyms to protect authors of controversial articles - new_guy
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-46146766
======
raincom
Pseudonyms are good for joint contributions, position papers,
summarizing/expanding the available criticisms, fundamentally new research.
Anything else get you get dox'ed: too many references to a set of authors can
lead in the direction of one of this set being the author.

We are in a sad state where we can't even discuss ideas.

~~~
colechristensen
My choice of internet handle (my real name) reflects my position on the topic.

Anonymity has a place, but people need to become more comfortable with
attaching their identities to their ideas. (and we need more protections or
enforcement for the consequesnces so people can actually feel safer)

~~~
Phary
A thought experiment. I am an academic. I post the material below on the
internet using my real name.

"there are more male geniuses in society than women because men are subject to
more variability in terms of IQ. In other words, while men had more people at
the tail ends of the IQ bell curve, women were more likely to have average IQ
scores."

What will happen to my career ?

Larry Summers did that. Within 13 months, he was forced to resign from his
job....

~~~
cafard
I would suggest a look at _Excellence Without a Soul_ by Harry Lewis (sometime
dean of Harvard College) before you conclude that it was only those comments
that lost Summers his job.

~~~
hn_throwaway_99
Actually, I think that makes it even worse. That is, Summers was unpopular
with particular groups for a bunch of different reasons, so he was eventually
fired for the pretense of having the audacity to say that the _possibility_
that innate gender differences could account for an imbalance in the sciences
_should be studied_.

Regardless of what you think of Summers, read the exact transcript of what he
actually said at that conference. The fact that he was fired for what he said
should be incredibly shameful for Harvard.

------
joemi
Now if we can just get around to fixing why we need such anonymity in an
academic journal in the first place... It's absurd that there's such danger in
saying something that doesn't entirely align with either the left or the right
(at least in the US). It feels quite a lot like McCarthyism to me (or what I
imagine it was like at that time, since I'm not that old).

~~~
rtpg
This reminds of the that NY Times "intellectual dark web" article, with such
obscure figures as Joe Rogan.

The man has one of the most popular podcasts in the world, but still can get
the times to write an article about how he's some underground thinker.

If you dig deeper into these kinds of complaints from these kinds of people,
it usually turns into "The people _I_ want to like me do not". They expect
universal admiration, and when they don't they yell about some sort of
conspiracy.

The fact that everyone even knows about the popular people making these
complaints disproves the thesis that they can't get out there and make their
arguments.

It just turns out that none of these alternative thinkers can handle any sort
of criticism against their ideas, and think there's a mass conspiracy. Ocamm's
razor suggests otherwise

~~~
leibwiht
Uh, people have their livelihoods destroyed and lives ruined for having
unpopular views all the time. James Watson literally had to sell his Nobel
prize because he was destitute, Curtis Yarvin was disinvited from Strange
Loop, to name two examples. Another example of the difficulty people have in
going against the status quo is this article, which was on HN several months
ago: [https://quillette.com/2018/09/07/academic-activists-send-
a-p...](https://quillette.com/2018/09/07/academic-activists-send-a-published-
paper-down-the-memory-hole/) .

The problem is not that they can't accept criticism, the problem is other
people disenfranchising them for their opinions.

~~~
zimpenfish
> unpopular views > James Watson literally had to sell his Nobel prize

He's a fairly blatant racist - I think that's a bit more than "unpopular" when
it comes to views.

> livelihoods destroyed and lives ruined > Curtis Yarvin was disinvited from
> Strange Loop

In what way did "not being invited to speak at a conference" destroy his
livelihood or ruin his life?

~~~
chroma
Being disinvited from a conference is the least of it. If he wasn’t the
founder of his own company, he would have lost his job. In 2016, security
escorted him off the SF Google campus when he visited a friend for lunch.
Apparently his name is on a blacklist (along with other conservative &
neoreactionary people).

When I met Curtis Yarvin, he told me about some efforts he’d been taking to
reduce the risk of violence to him and his family. I disagree with him on
pretty much everything, but it saddened me that he had to worry about that.

~~~
zimpenfish
> security escorted him off the SF Google campus when he visited a friend for
> lunch

I mean, sure, that's inconvenient but it's really nothing in the grand scheme
of things.

> some efforts he’d been taking to reduce the risk of violence to him and his
> family

If people have threatened him or his family, that definitely sucks and I
cannot condone or support those people.

------
jf-
It’ll last about five minutes. The first issue will see the reviewers and
editorial board subject to a hail of condemnation that will threaten or end
their careers. Even if the authors are anonymous, everyone identifiable will
be attacked for having the gall to give them a platform. All this does is
invite people to shoot the messenger, and they will.

------
gus_massa
This won't fly because:

* You can't put it in your resume. And that is importante because many academics need a minimal amount of publication each year. Perhaps someone with a tenure can have the luxury of a hidden article, but most of them have some graduate student or postdoc that is a coauthor and wants to increase the total count of papers by any mean.

* If the article is controversial enough, the authors will be identified using a text analysis. Most papers reuse a lot of parts of the previous papers of the authors, so it is not so difficult.

* Each controversial article will get the offended side (right/left/whatever) asking for an exemption of the anonymity and/xor deplataforming the journal.

~~~
anonytrary
Text analysis is like a polygraph, it's not really conclusive in and of itself
and it's not really grounds to convict someone. It might help point you in the
right direction if you ask the right questions, which may help lead you to
something more conclusive.

~~~
endominus
I don't think the standards of evidence demanded by those that authors of
controversial articles fear are stringent enough that "equivalent to a
polygraph" fails them.

------
longerthoughts
Who will contribute to this? Would institutions sign off on their staff
spending time on controversial work that brings them no immediate recognition?
Maybe this gets used as a staging area where institutions measure public
response and take credit if it looks like it's to their advantage?

~~~
ggggtez
I agree. The intention appears to be that if an Org funds a biased study, then
the funded academic can secretly publish a counter point to themselves. _That
's the best case_, and it means the academic published one paper that they
thought was false. So, this is a paper that accepts liars, as long as they
promise to tell the truth this time?

The _worst_ case is that the Org just cuts out the middle-man and writes the
paper themselves and publishes the BS study in this journal too.

------
tomcam
> Academics who are frightened to explore controversial topics, in case it
> provokes a backlash, will soon have a safer route to publish such work.

Assuming any of this is happening in the US, it's an indictment of the whole
system. This is what tenure is for.

EDIT: Oops, avani beat me to it:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18437414](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18437414)

------
ggggtez
What incentive other than your reputation is even available to ensure it's not
just filled with junk science?

We've seen in journals on social sciences, for example, that peer reviewers
can be fooled relatively easily. By setting up the incentives like this, won't
this just become a bastion of crackpots and frauds?

------
slivym
I've got to say, I can't actually call to mind any instances of controversial
peer-reviewed papers. I can point to the Bell Curve- that was controversial,
but it was a also a book written by a conservative political operative that
made specific governmental policy recommendations. That seems like an entirely
different topic to me. Or for another example let's take Jordan Peterson, he's
quite clearly written lots of academic papers. But are those controversial?

Not really, he's widely regarded as a fine professor of psychology. But does
that really wave a magic wand over his head and grant him immunity from being
judged for the self-help books he publishes? I don't think anyone reasonable
person would agree with that. Also, what protection does pseudonymous
authorship afford him? He's literally making a career out of touring different
countries giving speeches about the moral decay of western culture.

Here's my question: Does this problem actually exist? Or is this misplaced
fear about a different issue that actually does exist.

~~~
slavik81
There was a recent article about an academic paper that was so controversial
that it was erased after publication.
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17938318](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17938318)

~~~
slivym
Sorry but you're going to have cite some real sources, not right wing
propaganda. I mean, I read the entire article and I still for the life of me
can't actually understand on what basis the academic paper was 'erased'. I
assume that's because this 'article' is written by the person who is pushing
an agenda rather than an actual reporter reporting on the facts of an
incident. Frankly the whole thing reads as 'Those nasty people are idiots and
dont want people hearing how amazing my work is because then everyone will
know how stupid they are!'. I mean really, it's very difficult to actually get
any factual information about what happened. It's kind of difficult for me to
have sympathy if the only reports of this happening are far right blogs where
the author themselves is reporting what happened.

~~~
slavik81
For the sake of discussion, let's assume that the whole thing is a right-wing
propaganda piece. Isn't the result the same? The fear is real regardless of
whether it's proper or baseless.

If you want to ensure that academics don't self-censor out of fear of
reprasials, you could prove to potential authors that their fears are
baseless, or you could provide mitigations for their fears. Or, you could do
both.

~~~
slivym
I would've thought it's self-evident that if the problem isn't real then
you're never going to fix it. If the reason this problem exists is a political
tool for the right wing then the way to stop it won't be to pander to it.

