Sci-Hub Founder Criticizes Sudden Twitter Ban over “Counterfeit” Content • Hacker News Board

Re: Sci-Hub Founder Criticizes Sudden Twitter Ban over “Counterfeit” Content

#141

Post by stevespang » Fri, Jan 08, 2021, 6:19 PM UTC

throww223232423 wrote: post #135

joelthelion wrote: post #7

At some point we need to stop the hypocrisy, recognize that SciHub is too valuable to the community to be shut down, and fix laws so that it becomes either legal or useless. That's no easy task, but it's much better than having scientists from all over the world rely on it while simultaneously pretending they are dangerous criminals.

Twitter tries to cancel the Library of Alexandra. We should discuss a bit about Twitter as well, I think. In other comments I saw the resonable demand to express support for Elbakyan. Recall that we discuss about the biggest free library of research works. I tried this here: https://chorasimilarity.wordpress.com/2021/01/08/enemies-of-...

We need an better alternative to Twitter - - DUMP TWITTER !

Re: Sci-Hub Founder Criticizes Sudden Twitter Ban over “Counterfeit” Content

#142

Post by daotoad » Fri, Jan 08, 2021, 6:20 PM UTC

jowsie wrote: post #48

dcomp wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also when I was in academia (masters). If my university didn't subscribe to a journal (and it wasn't available via an inter-library loan (In the UK you can ask for a journal from another university)). I would just shoot an email to the author asking for a copy Edit: Actually I usually sent emails even when we did have a hard copy but no online access. Just because I couldn't be bothered to find the physical copy

The issue with this is the authors of some papers either don't respond or simply aren't alive anymore.

It also scales really badly.

If a paper becomes prominent and many people want to read it, is it reasonable for the authors to be inundated with hundreds of requests for a copy?

What is the point of journals if we rely on word of mouth interactions to share information?

Re: Sci-Hub Founder Criticizes Sudden Twitter Ban over “Counterfeit” Content

#143

Post by vslira » Fri, Jan 08, 2021, 6:20 PM UTC

_Wintermute wrote: post #83

breck wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also please post somewhere your support of her with your real name, and reach out with kind words. Every PhD I know relies on this site, but more importantly 10x+ more people I know who are otherwise "outside" academia rely on this site. How many of the world's best researchers in 30 years will have turned out to get their start in research not thanks to Academia but thanks to SciHub? My guess is most of them. And ma…

I mentioned Elbakyan and sci-hub in my PhD thesis acknowledgements. Hardly anyone will see it but it still felt like a little two-fingers to academic publishing.

Citing

"Sci-hub", Elbakyan A. et al

is definitely an academic trend I'd support :)

Re: Sci-Hub Founder Criticizes Sudden Twitter Ban over “Counterfeit” Content

#144

Post by ergocoder » Fri, Jan 08, 2021, 6:22 PM UTC

LMYahooTFY wrote: post #118

xnyan wrote: post #4

Rights holders have been trying to get rid of sites like the pirate bay for more than a decade, and if anything PB is easier to find and more reliable to use than ever before. If they really want change, it's time for them to dispassionately consider their situation. The way to "beat" piracy is to consider it as a competitor, which it is. When I was a kid, everyone downloaded raw mp3s and now that number is a fractio…

Gabe Newell was known for taking this stance if I recall correctly, describing piracy as usually a service problem and not a pricing problem. "We think there is a fundamental misconception about piracy. Piracy is almost always a service problem and not a pricing problem," he said. "If a pirate offers a product anywhere in the world, 24 x 7, purchasable from the convenience of your personal computer, and the legal pro…

It's only true in the first-world country.

Microsoft office is ~$1000, which is 2x higher than average month salary in Thailand/Vietnam.

A CD album is $10(?), which is equivalent to 10 meals. A cassette is $3, which is 3 meals.

Pirate is the only way to access these things. It's a pricing problem.

Re: Sci-Hub Founder Criticizes Sudden Twitter Ban over “Counterfeit” Content

#145

Post by im3w1l » Fri, Jan 08, 2021, 6:24 PM UTC

specialp wrote: post #69

Chris2048 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

SciHub doesn't have value so much as Elsevier has "anti-value". Scihub is a space without the negative effect of Elsevier gatekeeping, thus seeming to have a net positive effect. Instead of doing anything at all with SciHub, we should instead fight Elsevier. First blow should be on the basis that Elsevier is anti-competitive, by the logic that if wasn't there would be no reason for it to succeed at all. Second blow s…

Journals do have a value, but not the value that Elsevier extracts out of them to the tune of billions of dollars a year in profits. Facilitating peer-review, being selective, indexing content, archiving and copyediting does indeed cost money. If we had a world where there were a large number of people dealing with peer-review referee selection, managing correspondence for free, and copyediting for free we could easi…

My fear is that after the big for profit journals are smashed, they will be replaced by ideologues working for pennies because of the influence they get to wield. A few billions is a small price to pay imo.

Re: Sci-Hub Founder Criticizes Sudden Twitter Ban over “Counterfeit” Content

#146

Post by ergocoder » Fri, Jan 08, 2021, 6:24 PM UTC

joelthelion wrote: post #7

At some point we need to stop the hypocrisy, recognize that SciHub is too valuable to the community to be shut down, and fix laws so that it becomes either legal or useless. That's no easy task, but it's much better than having scientists from all over the world rely on it while simultaneously pretending they are dangerous criminals.

Twitter is a private business and can ban whoever they want at their disposal. I have been told repeatedly when asking why we don't have due process for this, especially when banning a high profile account.

Re: Sci-Hub Founder Criticizes Sudden Twitter Ban over “Counterfeit” Content

#147

Post by emidln » Fri, Jan 08, 2021, 6:31 PM UTC

specialp wrote: post #69

Chris2048 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

SciHub doesn't have value so much as Elsevier has "anti-value". Scihub is a space without the negative effect of Elsevier gatekeeping, thus seeming to have a net positive effect. Instead of doing anything at all with SciHub, we should instead fight Elsevier. First blow should be on the basis that Elsevier is anti-competitive, by the logic that if wasn't there would be no reason for it to succeed at all. Second blow s…

Journals do have a value, but not the value that Elsevier extracts out of them to the tune of billions of dollars a year in profits. Facilitating peer-review, being selective, indexing content, archiving and copyediting does indeed cost money. If we had a world where there were a large number of people dealing with peer-review referee selection, managing correspondence for free, and copyediting for free we could easi…

> Facilitating peer-review, being selective, indexing content, archiving and copyediting does indeed cost money.

Sci-Hub and arXiv both manage to be useful without peer-review (not everything these sites host is a pirate copy of a paywalled work), without being selective, and without copy editing. They archive and index, and each seems to do it much more cheaply than Elsevier.

Re: Sci-Hub Founder Criticizes Sudden Twitter Ban over “Counterfeit” Content

#148

Post by fakedang » Fri, Jan 08, 2021, 6:33 PM UTC

hndudette2 wrote: post #105

arp242 wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or didn't want to take the risk of using a somewhat experimental medicine (perhaps justifiably so, I don't know the details), or maybe the evidence is still promising but otherwise still very thin. Or they just didn't have the time to really research it as they also had dozens of other patients. There could be any number of reasons; without more details, I think it's quite a leap to immediately assume they're "lazy/o…

I'm going off my experience with doctors that I know personally. There's definitely a personality type or an attitude there that shuts them off to things that a layperson will bring to them even if it's based on good science (only they haven't studied it before).

Past experience is to blame for that. A lot of doctors blame patients for bringing utter bullshit that they scraped from Facebook or YouTube as the next Gen therapy.

For instance, I have a background in biochemical engineering, my fiancée is a cancer surgeon, 4 cousins are doctors, and another 3 cousins married doctors. Yet the entire family collectively believes in homeopathy, unani medicine (Greek medicine) and other hogwash like cupping therapy, save for a select few. The last time I visited one of my relatives, they were ingesting some ayurvedic (Indian medicine) concoction that was later found to contain arsenic. One of my friends is daughter to two doctors, yet her Dad (a former Indian Army doctor, so not the run-of-the-mill kind) still spouted nonsense on Facebook like "burning Turmeric powder and inhaling it would prevent COVID".

It's easy to understand, after all this, why doctors tend to be generally skeptical of laymen bringing them some new "breakthrough". Not much to do with personality than with what they see as a daily occurrence. Of course, one way to sift the chaff away from the grain would be to demand that patients bring in scientifically published papers, at which point most patients would scoff at you for not supporting their viewpoint.

Re: Sci-Hub Founder Criticizes Sudden Twitter Ban over “Counterfeit” Content

#149

Post by mncharity » Fri, Jan 08, 2021, 6:43 PM UTC

joelthelion wrote: post #7

At some point we need to stop the hypocrisy, recognize that SciHub is too valuable to the community to be shut down, and fix laws so that it becomes either legal or useless. That's no easy task, but it's much better than having scientists from all over the world rely on it while simultaneously pretending they are dangerous criminals.

> scientists

Not only scientists need sci-hub.

Educators need sci-hub. People writing education content. Or trying to understand existing content, steeped in misconceptions. Students. A science-literate public.

When I hobby work on OER science education content, or even when I answer a "ask a science/history/whatever question" on reddit, I use google scholar, open access. and sci-hub.

And "I'd really like to see paper X" is not my common case. Though it does occur when double checking that I've finally understood something correctly. My usual case is wrestling with a concept, or trying to put an number to something. I search, and I surf, and I find a paper that might have one helpful sentence in it, 10% chance. And I can check... for only $40! And again a minute later. Or sci-hub. And it's not just greatly reduced friction - those sentences found, are not infrequently, the difference between success and punting, or the lead to a better way of understanding and explaining something.

It's ironic that the American Chemical Society is working with Elsevier to make research literature less accessible to the public, while chemistry education research, describes chemistry education content, using words like "incoherent", and as leaving both students and teachers steeped in misconceptions.

Re: Sci-Hub Founder Criticizes Sudden Twitter Ban over “Counterfeit” Content

#150

Post by reader345611 » Fri, Jan 08, 2021, 6:45 PM UTC

eloff wrote: post #86

wincy wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When our daughter was born with a rare life threatening condition my wife used SciHub to read articles about her condition. While the doctors had merely skimmed the pages, my wife pored over them and found a suggestion of using a particular drug. After asking five different doctors about it, one finally agreed to prescribe it. It was strange how reticent doctors were to prescribe something and instead just told us sh…

Thank you for sharing an inspiring story. When my mom was diagnosed with breast cancer my dad poured over literally hundreds of medical papers to determine the best course of action. I believe he saved her life. Scihub was instrumental in that. I helped a little in checking and challenging his conclusions. I think it's unlikely she would have had as good an outcome if we'd just listened to the doctors. My conclusion…

That's amazing. Breast cancer is a common killer. Do you plan to write about it? Would love to read about. it.