In the 80:s, when I was a child, I was part of study about something called DAMP - Deficits in Attention Motor control and Perception). The DAMP diagnosis was r

In the 80:s, when I was a child, I was part of study about something called DAMP - Deficits in Attention Motor control and Perception). The DAMP diagnosis was roughly similar to ADHD, and kind of a precursor to it, invented by psychologists in the university in the city I grew up on. Back then, this Swedish university was very influential in the area of child psychology. Several renowned text books are written by researches on this university and so on. Luckily for me, I was part of the control group and not among the kids they thought suffered from DAMP. Anyway, Gillberg the professor who led the study had promised all participating families total anonymity. But in the mid nineties, other researchers started to doubt the veracity of Gillberg's results. They thought they had found flaws in his methodology and wanted access to the raw material to double-check his results. Gillberg refused, realizing that anonymizing the data sufficiently so as to not leak any identifying details would be impossible. Eventually, the other researchers went to court and got a court order demanding that Gillberg give up his data. At which point he destroyed all the raw data thereby completely removing any scientific underpinnings the DAMP diagnosis had. There is a lot more to be said about this controversy, but one thing is clear and that is that you shouldn't promise anonymity if you can't keep it.