Yes, I remember reading about the ‘camelCase versus underscores’ research favouring the latter though there’s not a lot of difference and I think a more important consideration when using a particular language is to use the naming style which is conventional or prevalent in that language.
Having said all that, I personally much prefer camelCase to underscores and so I’m pleased that this is the convention in Kotlin as it is in Java. I do however agree with @darksnake that it’s sensible to make an exception for compile time constants where ‘shouted snake case’ is the usual convention.
Kotlin Native has a bit of a problem here with C interop where most native libraries (though by no means all) stick to the C convention of using snake case. Consequently, code which calls C functions tends to be an uneasy mix between the two systems.
It might be possible for the CInterop tool which automatically translates C header files to Kotlin ‘klib’ files - and must be very complex internally - to change the C names to Kotlin style names at the same time. However, even this wouldn’t be an ideal solution, because if you were trying to convert C code examples to Kotlin you’d need to mentally adjust to the changes.