Yeah, but no.\u00a0 I think it’s reasonable enough to say that academic progress depends on the free exchange of ideas, and that there should be no sacred cows.\u00a0 Sometimes conventional ideas turn out to be untenable or flat-out wrong; and we tend to take it as axiomatic that it’s desirable to have fewer wrong ideas.\u00a0 (I suppose we\u00a0could imagine a culture that is satisfied with its opinions as they are, and is not bothered by their truth\u00a0so much as by some other value they might have, such as their\u00a0ability\u00a0to promote social\u00a0cohesion; but I’ll leave such cultures aside for the moment.) \u00a0I’d go along with the idea that we shouldn’t back away from controversial claims, on the basis that repugnance is no objection to the truth of a claim; that if a claim’s true, we should accept it as best we can, like it or not; and that if a claim is false, we shouldn’t have cause to fear its articulation, because we can take it that it won’t survive scrutiny.<\/p>\n
And I’d agree that some of the responses to the paper – and to Julian’s defence of publication<\/span><\/a><\/span> – were indefensible, and that this is so irrespective of the merits or demerits of the paper or the defence.\u00a0 But not all of them were.\u00a0 While some were from obvious dingbats and keyboard warriors (Jonolan remains even now the sole occupant of the banned commenters list here – and I rather suspect that he rather enjoys that honour), other responses were from people whom\u00a0one might\u00a0think wrong, but whose response was nonetheless worth taking seriously because it was much more considered and at least on the face of it amenable to argument – which is what academic discourse is all about.<\/p>\n Does any of this tell us about threats to academic freedom, though?\u00a0 I don’t think so.\u00a0 I\u00a0struggle to see\u00a0how you can claim that your freedom is under threat when the very paper\u00a0you have in mind and that you’re using as an example of the kind of thing that’s allegedly threatened was accepted, was published, and is still available to be read.<\/p>\n While it’s true that the internet has meant faster and wider dissemination of ideas, and that it has a very long memory… well, it has a very short memory too, precisely because it allows for such huge dissemination of information.\u00a0 Just about everything gets overwhelmed almost straight away; and it’s hard to stay angry, as Homer demonstrates<\/span><\/a><\/span><\/span>. \u00a0Things stay on the internet for a long time; but they also stay on the printed page for a long time. \u00a0More people see online stuff – but isn’t that a good thing? \u00a0Isn’t it odd to complain that research is insufficiently hard to find, and to dress that complaint up as a claim about academic freedom?<\/p>\n Other points Minerva raises strike me as being a little melodramatic:<\/p>\n As the majority of the emails we received were sent from people in the USA, we have been advised against presenting talks in the States for the next year or so. \u00a0If this precaution were actually necessary, it constitutes a significant limitation on our professional freedom.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Hmmm. \u00a0Note the grammatical twist in the final sentence: we go from an if<\/em> clause, to an\u00a0is<\/em>. \u00a0If it were necessary, it might well constitute a limitation. \u00a0But we don’t know if it is necessary. \u00a0We’re dealing with hypotheticals; and it’s a hypothetical that isn’t a new<\/em> threat to academic freedom anyway – not least because any work on abortion already attracts its fair share of wingnuts, especially in the States. \u00a0Either way, to publish a paper defending infanticide and expect\u00a0not<\/em>\u00a0to face at lesast a similar blowback is… well, a touch naive.<\/p>\n She continues:<\/p>\n Our productivity decreased for the weeks following the publication of the paper, while we were worn down by the hate emails and requests for interviews from journalists. \u00a0More generally, thinking and writing are activities that require a minimal level of tranquillity, something we certainly lacked in those weeks.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Whole weeks, eh?\u00a0 Gee, whizz.\u00a0 Also, anyone who has\u00a0teaching and administrative responsibilities is doubtless going to be wondering when they<\/em> get this tranquility. \u00a0I hate to sound like the chippy provincial here, but: really. \u00a0Come on.<\/p>\n Minerva’s suggestion is that papers be published anonymously.\u00a0 As she admits, this is not a new idea; and\u00a0I think that some of the coverage of The Paper that I saw in the mainstream media was not only over-personal, but\u00a0outright\u00a0leery, so I can understand the basis for the thought.\u00a0 On the anonymity proposal,<\/p>\n papers may still elicit hateful reactions from the public and the media, but these would be directed at the idea itself rather than at its author.\u00a0 A difference that is often forgotten in this kind of public pillory is that between the person who proposes an argument and the argument itself.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n I’m sympathetic.\u00a0 But I do still think that the case for anonymity is unconvincing.\u00a0 The main reason for this is that it’s not a guarantee of academic freedom, but rather a distortion at best, and maybe a harm to it.\u00a0 Minerva suggests that<\/p>\n if the author agrees, we could also consider disclosing her name (e.g. added to the online version of the paper, or just published on the Website of the journal) after a certain amount of time, for instance five years.\u00a0 The time interval between the publication and the disclosure of the name should be long enough to let the possible media storm calm down and to make sure that any debate about a paper focuses on the ideas there developed, rather than being directed at the author.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n But this wouldn’t work.\u00a0 Maybe debate in journals could continue in its sedate way, and\u00a0we’d see sentences that begin with phrases like “What Author w26\/qxv argues is that…” instead of “What Smith argues is that…” – but it’d mean that students or other readers who wanted quick clarification on a particular point would be unable to get it.\u00a0 It’d mean, too, that people couldn’t give papers a dry-run in conferences, unless they wore a bag on their head – or that conference attendees would be forbidden from talking about papers they heard afterwards.\u00a0 The proposal would be, in other words, unworkable, and undesirable.\u00a0 It’d stultify academia, not guarantee its freedom.<\/p>\n Besides: even if editors would know the identity of authors, that wouldn’t stop authors using anonymity to publish a string of papers in several journals with different editors in which they praise their own contributions lavishly.<\/p>\n One of Minerva’s other proposals seems even stranger to me.\u00a0 The name of a paper’s author, she suggests,<\/p>\n should always be disclosed to the head of the department where the scholar works.\u00a0 When publishing an anonymous paper, journals could notify those who directly deal with the author and inform them about the research, so as to allow the department to make informed decisions about whether or not to retain a certain person as an employee.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n No, no, no.\u00a0\u00a0One of the things academic\u00a0freedom means is that your HoD doesn’t get to tell you what you can and can’t do.\u00a0 I can see that anonymity might protect against the collateral damage that a controversial paper might\u00a0do to a department as a whole, but why should\u00a0the HoD have the veil lifted?\u00a0 The fact that there’d be less chance for others to be associated with a paper against their will under anonymity would give colleagues less reason to be bothered; but it’d also mean that there’d be a much higher chance for Heads to use their privileged information to take decisions about recruitment on a personal basis, and for it not to be scrutable. \u00a0It’s\u00a0not as if there isn’t bitchiness and back-stabbing in any given department.\u00a0 Letting the HoD know simply allows him to play politics, and is, as such, a much bigger threat to academic freedom than would be any number of spotty World of Warcraft<\/em> obsessives who like the idea of killing a few academics but who are in reality too scared of sunlight even to go outside.<\/p>\n Yes, a lot of the response to The Paper was nasty.\u00a0\u00a0Yet it was hardly surprising; and it was hardly new; and it was hardly a threat to academic freedom.\u00a0 By contrast, anonymity would, at best, replace those problems with other ones that may be new and may be genuine threats to academic freedom.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" … and cross-referenced with the file marked “You Wouldn’t Let It Lie”. Francesca Minerva has a paper in Bioethics in which she refers – none-too-obliquely – to the furore surrounding The Paper Of Which We Do Not Speak.\u00a0 Her central claim is that there is a threat to academic freedom posed by modern communications, inasmuch […]<\/p>\n![\"Moggy2\"](\"https:\/\/stg-blogs.bmj.com\/medical-ethics\/files\/2013\/11\/Moggy2.jpg\")
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