“ Ivan Oransky, co-founder of Retraction Watch, which keeps track of scientific retractions, says: “I would love for scientists, journals, and universities who refuse to take seriously anonymous complaints and allegations about papers to tell me how they feel about the anonymous whistle-blower [who brought forth concerns about President Donald Trump’s dealings with Ukraine].”
It is a shaky argument for the right debate from Professor Oransky. The secret services and journalists know the identity of the Ukraine whistleblower, they just don’t reveal it. If they did not know the whistleblower’s identity, they would not be able to trust their reports. Anonymity is not same as confidentiality.
This is exactly why university ombudspeople and journal editors sometimes insist of knowing the real identity of the whistleblower, the problem here: these people cannot be trusted not to rat out the whistleblower.
In science, whistleblowing of the kind Dr Bik or the pseudonymous “Clare Francis” do, is different: the evidence speaks by itself. The identity of the whistleblower is irrelevant, because the whistleblower cannot provide any further information beyond the evidence which the investigators themselves can easily verify and reproduce.
Btw, you should have mentioned Clare Francis, they do it for many years already, also as “ Fernando Pessoa” and other pseudonyms. On my site, CF comments as “Zebedee”.
