The Chatham House Rule is as follows: When a meeting, or part thereof, is held under the Chatham House Rule, participants are free to use the information recieved, but neither the identity nor the affiliation of the speaker(s), nor that of any other participant, may be revealed.

This is used for a number of reasons, usually to allow industry/government people who would otherwise be bound by NDAs or professional standards to provide their valuable contributions.

On the other hand, it means that the contributions of people not bound by NDAs or professional standards have their contributions, and labour, hidden. Only the people in the room could ever acknowledge credit in further private dealings. This makes it harder to build credibility and so on.

Not recording attribution/relying on memory disadvantages marginalised scholars, due to well-understood cognitive biases.

Additionally, it matters who says what! Bland Chatham-house-ised summary documents obscure which reactionary arguments were put forward by company lobbyists versus a consumer rights group. Positionality matters.

TL;DR it priviliges the needs of those who are not willing to have their views attributed over those who benefit from attribution and credit.

What do I think?

Yeah I basically agree with every point here. Smothering NDAs and standards are a problem, but the Chatham house rule is an imperfect solution. We should challenge those NDAs and standards via legal action instead.

Something to think about as I attend more and more meetings. I gotta make an effort to credit properly!!