IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT (well, sort of)

[Jorge_Stolfi]

If the result is specific (say, "JOHNDEESIGNATURE" "JOHNDEESIGNATUREONF57V"), it can be extracted, if it's not very specific (say, "HASASIANFRUITS"), it can be contested as not specific enough and retrofitted post-hoc, after someone else discovers Asian fruits in the MS. Of course, if no-one makes a contesting claim before you show the cards, then there is no difference if there was a protective anagram in the first place.

There have been many cases of scientific discoveries stolen bydishonest journal reviewers or collaborators.  Two that come to mind are the isolation of the HIV virus and Cold Fusion.

In the latter case, two electrochemists thought that they had achieved deuterium-deuterium nuclear fusion by using electrolysis to push the deuterium atoms into palladium, above their normal maximum density. They left the equipment running one night and in the next morning they found only a hole in the concrete lab benchtop.  They rushed out a paper to the prestigious journal Nature.  But one of the referees who got the paper -- another electrochemist who had been working with palladium -- told the journal that he had made the same discovery before them, and was just writing it up.  (In fact none of the three had, because the "discovery" was a big mistake.  But that is not the point.) There ensued a bitter feud between the two groups, that was never satisfactory resolved. 

The first group could have prevented that theft by sending to any famous guy an anagram of the phrase "D IN PD IS KABOOM" .  Even if the anagram was solvable and had many other solutions, that would have been enough to establish their priority -- because the other group could not produce any evidence that would beat that one.

All the best, --stolfi