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posted by janrinok on Thursday February 01 2018, @01:01AM   Printer-friendly
from the peer-reviewed-by-anonymous dept.

A judge has ordered that anonymous peer reviewers for an article in a science journal be unmasked on behalf of the exercise regimen company CrossFit, Inc.. The journal is published by a competitor of CrossFit:

In what appears to be a first, a U.S. court is forcing a journal publisher to breach its confidentiality policy and identify an article's anonymous peer reviewers.

The novel order, issued last month by a state judge in California, has alarmed some publishers, who fear it could deter scientists from agreeing to review draft manuscripts. Legal experts say the case, involving two warring fitness enterprises, isn't likely to unleash widespread unmasking. But some scientists are watching closely.

The dispute revolves around a 2013 paper, since retracted, that appeared in The Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research. In the study, researchers at The Ohio State University in Columbus evaluated physical and physiological changes in several dozen volunteers who participated for 10 weeks in a training regimen developed by CrossFit Inc. of Washington, D.C. Among other results, they reported that 16% of participants dropped out because of injury.

In public and in court, CrossFit has alleged that the injury statistic is false. CrossFit also claims that the journal's publisher, the National Strength and Conditioning Association (NSCA) of Colorado Springs, Colorado—which is a competitor in the fitness business—intentionally skewed the study to damage CrossFit. NSCA in turn has countersued, accusing CrossFit executives of defamation. Amid the legal crossfire, the journal first corrected the paper to reduce the number of injuries associated with CrossFit, then retracted it last year, citing changes to a study protocol that were not first approved by a university review board.

CrossFit suspects the paper's reviewers and editors worked to play up injuries associated with its regimen, and it has asked both federal and state judges to force the publisher to unmask the reviewers. In 2014, a federal judge refused that request. But last month, Judge Joel Wohlfeil of the San Diego Superior Court in California, who is overseeing NSCA's defamation suit against CrossFit, ordered the association to provide the names.


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  • (Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 01 2018, @01:43AM (4 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 01 2018, @01:43AM (#631287)

    Don't put your name on anything. We'll just have to depend the reputation of one's internet avatar, with no real name attached to come back haunt you. It might help to spoof your IP also. Geolocation seems to be a thing that is often abused.

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  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 01 2018, @02:31AM (3 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 01 2018, @02:31AM (#631300)

    I take away a different lesson. When I peer review engineering papers, I'm going to start keeping my notes and comments so I have a backup. That way I could tell if someone changed my review behind my back. But most of the time I know the organizer of the technical session (who oversees the review process) well enough that I'm not really worried.

    • (Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 01 2018, @04:25AM (1 child)

      by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 01 2018, @04:25AM (#631340)

      But none of that protects you from the police. If you want to do something anonymously, you have to take steps so that nobody can identify you no matter what the judge orders.

      • (Score: 2) by edIII on Thursday February 01 2018, @07:52PM

        by edIII (791) on Thursday February 01 2018, @07:52PM (#631645)

        Damned right. You cannot depend on someone's honor for jack diddly shit, unless they're the Alpha and Omega of the process. Nobody ever is, since law enforcement exists with a government that wants to watch and record everything for our security.

        If you want to be anonymous, then it needs to be done on a technical level, not a social one via verbal agreements. Social locks are can be as good as wet paper holding the bad people back (government), or almost as good as technical (Larry Flynt going to prison to protect a source). Technical locks though can be forever, and in some cases absolute, and they're never vulnerable to the threat of imprisonment or worse.

        Any anonymous peer review that has a section for you to put your name in, has already failed.

        This judge apparently doesn't understand that every participant expected privacy, and certainly doesn't value anonymity which is a bedrock principle of our country.

        --
        Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 01 2018, @11:56AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 01 2018, @11:56AM (#631433)

      Don't forget to sign and date the pages.