Pseudonyms in science: yea or nay?

Post date: Feb 28, 2016 9:53:52 AM

I have to admit, before today, I would have found it hard to think up a situation where using a pseudonym would be remotely appropriate in publishing an article, but...

An article in Science describes the conflict arising when the creators of Eterna, a online "game" for crowdsourcing RNA folding problems, wanted to publish their latest results in collaboration with the major game players. The problem: the manuscript was submitted with the online handles of the player-authors instead or their "real life" names.