Personal accountability of ideas in academia

Linus Pauling is one of only three people to win two different Nobel Prizes, so when he put forth an idea, people tended to take it seriously. In the early days of quantum chemistry, he knew more about atoms and molecules than anyone who had come before him. Later in his life, he began advocating for mega-dosing vitamin C as a panacea for many diseases. People took his suggestions seriously and the idea that vitamin C cures (or diminishes) many diseases has fully engrained itself in our cultural “wisdom”. Unfortunately, that idea is probably also wrong. This is the poster child example of people listening to and believing a brilliant scientist about something completely out of their area of expertise. Taking large doses of vitamin C isn’t particularly bad for most people, so this idea wasn’t as dangerous as many quack ideas, but the idea was adopted not on the merits of supporting evidence, but on the prestige of its primary advocate. If Pauling’s advocacy for vitamin C was anonymous, would we have followed his recommendations? Probably not.

Pauling is among the most famous scientists of the 20th century, and among the ranks of infamous scientists Charles Murray ranks highly. Murray found himself in hot water after publishing data about the differences in average intelligence between racial groups. That publication has been a very visible albatross around his neck ever since that has warned many other scientists away from pursuing similar lines of inquiry. While I don’t wish to engage with the debate about Murray’s research, I will posit that there are many bright young scientists who have important questions to seek the answers to who have been scared off from pursuing their well intentioned inquiries and instead choose the safety of less controversial topics. If scientists were able to publish research anonymously, they would be able to explore controversial ideas without risk to their careers (or themselves). The beleaguered young graduate students losing sleep over a manuscript on a paper about the feeding habits of arboreal arthropods probably doesn’t have much use for anonymity, but a researcher seeking an answer about the societal effects of gun violence, abortion, vaccines, race or any number of other third rail topics might want to minimize their death threats while still being able to contribute meaningfully to the most important discussions of this era.

If the science is sound, then the data should be able to speak for itself and shouldn’t need an esteemed champion to promote it. If the science is questionable, then the data should be what is refuted, and not initiate the ad hominem cancellation of the scientists who made the mistakes. Of course there are many conceivable scenarios where tracing an article’s authorship would be the moral and wise choice, but academic anonymity wouldn’t need to be absolute to be effective. The WS Gosset published his statistical methods papers under the anonymous moniker “student”, many female authors have found pseudonyms an effective tool to circumvent some patriarchal biases, and even the Federalist Papers were written anonymously (or at least attempted). The scientific community espouses that the data is really what matters, but in practice, human beings see and judge the other human beings doing the science. Many of the very papers that are published use clinical blinding as a method to reduce bias, and then in a turn of irony the readers of those very papers prejudge the results by the track record of the author instead of the strengths of the study. For certain there would be challenges and unintended consequences of anonymous research, but it is clear that always having a name attached to a paper introduces some problems.