<story><title>Pseudonyms to protect authors of controversial articles</title><url>https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-46146766</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>raincom</author><text>Pseudonyms are good for joint contributions, position papers, summarizing&amp;#x2F;expanding the available criticisms, fundamentally new research. Anything else get you get dox&amp;#x27;ed: too many references to a set of authors can lead in the direction of one of this set being the author.&lt;p&gt;We are in a sad state where we can&amp;#x27;t even discuss ideas.</text></comment>
<story><title>Pseudonyms to protect authors of controversial articles</title><url>https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-46146766</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>joemi</author><text>Now if we can just get around to fixing why we need such anonymity in an academic journal in the first place... It&amp;#x27;s absurd that there&amp;#x27;s such danger in saying something that doesn&amp;#x27;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&amp;#x27;m not that old).</text></comment>