By RALPH E. CHAPMAN

As a paleontologist, I have had a lot of experience in reviewing scientific papers that have been submitted for publication. Back in the day, I probably averaged a dozen or more a year. When I did review, I never did it anonymously: I always signed my reviews.

I did this many reasons. First of all, I thought (and think) it was more respectful to the effort the author(s) made to produce the paper. Second, I have always considered criticism to be most effective and taken more seriously if the author(s) know of the background ― the knowledge base ― of the reviewer and could understand how he/she arrived at the opinion they gave in the review. Finally, if you know you are going to sign a review, you inevitably take more time in thinking about it and, especially, with any criticism/suggestions you make.

Most of the authors who received the reviews generally appreciated that I signed them and most were happy to work with me and the editors to optimize the quality of the paper, if at all necessary. Not all, as there were always those papers that were beyond resuscitation and some author(s) never can quite see that.

By the way, another reason I believe reviews should not be anonymous is that, in some areas of study, there seems to be a cottage industry of reviewers who hold up and reject papers, while running right out and trying to publish the same ideas. Having to sign your name makes that more difficult.

As the years passed, it became more and more difficult to sign reviews because the journals took away that option. So, I stopped doing them when it was more trouble to sign a review than do the review. The whole area of science seemed hellbent on going to anonymous criticism.

This evolution towards anonymity has infected many aspects of our culture and has led to the donnybrook that is the internet these days, where people attack, slander and purposely misstate what people say under the banner of not having to sign their names. It has led to our current epidemic of cyber-bullying and, I also believe, has help lead us to the other epidemic of fake news.

Anyway, I bring this up because, as The Los Alamos Daily Post has become our main pipeline for many discussions (along with Facebook, etc.), we have had some real emotional/heated arguments going on.

The other day I read a post by “Concerned Citizen” that, in my first hasty reading of it, seemed to attack George Chandler. This concerned me in that the post was, in effect, anonymous and the target was not. Now there was another post critical of Mr. Chandler by Greg White but, of course, unless Greg White is a pseudonym, that is not a problem.

Now, I reread the “Concerned Citizen” post and realized that was mostly an error on my part from hasty reading. It had a critical aspect to it, but was not a personal attack that would concern me all that much. So, not a problem.

However, as we seem to get more anonymous comments these days, I believe the best way to solve a problem is to anticipate it before it occurs, and head it off at the pass. So, to avoid ever having that problem, I would suggest the following ground rule.

If you really have a reason to post anonymously, you can do so (although it is suboptimal in a civilized society, IMHO), but you must refrain from personal or direct attacks on those who have signed their works. Philosophical or theoretical discussions are fine, of course, but it would be immoral, in my opinion, to attack directly those who have signed their work if you have not.

I believe it is time for the Daily Post to develop a strong series of editorial guidelines for people submitting opinions/columns, and I think this should be one of the first additions to that. This should be independent of the politics and/or philosophy of the comment.

If a submission does not meet the criteria outlined by the guidelines, it should not be published. People are always welcome to publish stuff elsewhere anyway, and do. That goes for whatever the political, or other, view.

That’s what I think. We are easily one of the smartest counties in the country, it would be good to try to be one of the wisest as well.