NIPS & double blind reviewing

[Barak]

I've heard three objections to blinded reviews.  To my mind, none of
them quite hold water.

 OBJECTION 1: It is hard to conceal the authors' identity against the
      industrious/perceptive/clueful reviewer.  Sometimes clues are
      unavoidable.

  WHY IT DOESN'T HOLD WATER: So what?  In that case blinding isn't any
  different from the current situation, so why are you objecting?  Not
  all reviewers have these abilities, so blinding will work completely
  on them.  Besides, even the most perceptive reviewer won't figure it
  out for all papers, only for some.  And even when they think they've
  figured it out, being 80% sure of the author is, psychologically,
  very different from being 100% sure.  Plus, starting an active
  search for the author's identity might give a reviewer pause ...

 OBJECTION 2: Sometimes the reviewer actually needs to know the
      author, eg for theory papers where whether a proof sketch is
      believable depends on the author.

  WHY IT DOESN'T HOLD WATER: Err, really?  Well, if the reviewer feels
  themselves to be in that situation, they can either say so in the
  review, or ask the program committee for the author's name with a
  brief explanation as to why.  It certainly seems healthy,
  particularly in this (surely quite rare, and therefore low amortized
  overhead) situation, to have the first pass through the paper be
  blind!

 OBJECTION 3: The author might be a well known plagiarist/crackpot/liar.

  WHY IT DOESN'T HOLD WATER: This is the program committee's job.
  Anyway it would be easy enough to reveal the authors' names to the
  reviewers *after* they have their reviews in, so they can bring such
  an extraordinary situation to the program committee's attention.