Cases
Dr. Marsha Reyngold v. National Institutes of Health
CASE SUMMARY
A physician at the globally renowned Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, Dr. Marsha Reyngold has conducted extensive medical research and speaks at scientific conferences around the world. She has co-authored dozens of publications in academic journals. She was known as Marsha Laufer from 2004 to 2011 after legally changing her name when getting married. She has since reverted to using the last name Reyngold when publishing.
While Dr. Reyngold can link multiple names to her Open Researcher and Contributor Identifier in PubMed, users are generally not aware of this unique identifier and only search by last name. The PubMed search engine does not advise users that a unique identifier for a given author even exists. PubMed’s failure to show Dr. Reyngold’s full scientific contributions by omitting articles written under another surname makes it more difficult for her to obtain grants and speaking engagements. This same problem impacts millions of scientists who have changed their names for reasons of marriage or divorce. The policy has a particular negative effect on women who are much more likely to change their names following a change in marital status.
NIH’s refusing to cross-reference PubMed-catalogued studies by authors who have published under multiple names violates Fifth and Fourteenth Amendment guarantees to equal protection under the law. The agency is also depriving Dr. Reyngold and others of due process under the Fifth Amendment, which protects the fundamental right to marry or divorce. The policy is arbitrary and capricious as well, which is another reason for setting it aside under the Administrative Procedure Act. NCLA represents Dr. Reyngold to correct this systematic problem.
