A World Without Sci-Hub

> By framing the debate about Sci-Hub as one concerning property rights, both advocates of Elbakyan’s site and its detractors fall afoul of what John Gall called the “operational fallacy.” In his book The Systems Bible, Gall defined the operational fallacy as a situation where “the system itself does not do what it says it is doing.” In other words, what a system calls itself is not always a reliable indicator of its true function. In this case, the name of the “academic publishing industry” implies that it is supposed to be involved in the dissemination of scholarship. But the effective function of the academic publishing industry as it actually exists is to prevent the dissemination of scholarly work.

The author mentions his disproval of Elbakyan and her friends focusing on property rights, yet doesn't actually make a logical or convincing argument against it. Fail.

The reason Elbakyan focuses on property rights is because intellectual property is the most harmful thing blocking science today.

Intellectual property literally commoditizes and monopolizes collective feedback loops/learnings, disinheriting the working class.

I understand this. There are first year graduate students in my field that have a far deeper understanding on the basic science behind certain papers than the general public, and yet even they struggle to parse those papers' conclusions. I mean this is even true for PhDs working in the same field, given the right paper.

When I say scientific literacy, I mean something far more basic than actually understanding anything to do with any specific field. I mean (among other things) understanding what you just said, that scientific fields are deeply complex, understanding how actual science is done (peer review, incentives and motivations, author bias, etc), and, given the first two points, that one should generally be skeptical when a citation consists of only a paper's title.

> But access to source can allow someone to validate the claims by a journalist or a public officials trying to bend conclusion to support their view.

I'm aware of this, and I said that I was in favor of open access as opposed to a simply closed system (i.e. open is a, potentially quite large, net positive). I'm just pointing out that the potential for misinterpretation/misuse is also present (which is also what the comment I was responding to was pointing out), just as there is potential for validation and combating misinterpretation/misuse. But, as you said, the vast majority will be unable to read/understand specialized fields, which might lead to (potentially more frequent) misinterpretation//misuse (even unintentionally).

The quality of the conversations that your work fosters makes HN a bastion of authentic and thoughtful interactions amongst strangers. Thanks for what you do dang. I'll try to do better.