I think for once Alexander is in the right, and the Times acted unethically. I don't understand why anyone thinks its significant that his identity was easily findable from his blog; what matters is the other direction (that cursory Googling by his patients not lead to SSC)
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Replying to @Pinboard
Cursory Googling of his name does lead to SSC, on the first page of search results, in an anonymous browser window, or did for me.
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I’ve have to see the article to have an opinion on whether the NYT acted unethically, but will add that it seems certain that anyone who wanted to fuck with Scott Alexander already knew his name, because they were already circulating it long before the article.
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(I wish people with a low opinion of him would stop deliberately using his name in conversations though; it makes everyone with qualms about his work seem like a jerk.)
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Replying to @tqbf
I think you're missing the point. It's not that the guy's name was a big secret, but that it wasn't stapled to his professional identity. The system worked by common consent for years until the Times decided it needed to publicly name him.
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Replying to @Pinboard
No, I understand that point very well, I just dispute it. But more importantly, I haven’t seen the article, and I don’t trust Scott Alexander to represent it to me. I don’t have enough evidence to make any kind of assessment about the NYT here.
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A cursory search didn't used to lead to his blog (I had checked immediately). Maybe now it does, but that's because of the brouhaha. I think NYT is clearly and unequivocally in the wrong here, regardless of what the author says or does otherwise. Pen names are common in the NYT.
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Hi! Different people saw different results. A group of us checked immediately as well, investigating exactly this claim (“the NYT article would mean his patients, Googling him, would quickly find his blog”) and several of us got there with just his name.
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In any case it wasn't a clear link! Leakages doesn't give the NYT the right to deny him the use of the pen name. Friction matters. I know people NYT hired, published and announced using pen names. It's a common, routine practice. How can they deny one author the right?
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You might be right! I haven’t read the story; I have only Scott Alexander’s word to go on, and he isn’t trustworthy.
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I'm concerned how that kind of one-sided decision-making ("your opsec sucks so we will refuse you the right to a pen name") is disastrous for so many people with far fewer connections than him (and much more to lose). Pen names are a basic right they normally respect.
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Without injecting the name here: the argument is a mental health professional who has been secretly cultivating a community around a eugenics movement, and who has on multiple occasions described patient outcomes in detail including location might have had this coming.
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Replying to @KirinDave @zeynep and
Ignore opsec for a moment. If he's discussing patient details, locations and dating material; that's a big ethics red flag we can't simply handwave away with pseudonymity.
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