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Can someone offer some perspective on why opening up all this knowledge to the web would be an effective attack on western civilization (as is speculated in the
by azeirah 8y ago
Can someone offer some perspective on why opening up all this knowledge to the web would be an effective attack on western civilization (as is speculated in the comments of the article)? I'm not concerned about the legality of their operation, just curious that if, some larger criminal institution is behind this, why would it be an effective attack on Western civilization to publish tons of research, journals and articles for free?
My view on it is probably wayy too naive, 'free and open-access is better', but I see non-academics and enthusiasts all over the web using sci-hub for all kinds of research.
Who's being hurt here?
- wongarsu 8y agoIn theory you could operate such a service maliciously. For example you could withhold all papers advocating some viewpoint. If for example all papers advocating that sugar is harmless are freely available and all papers advocating that sugar is harmful can't be accessed, that might shift the perceived consensus. Or much more advanced and also more insidious: you could serve modified versions of some papers, either making them less credible or changing their conclusions completely. However, there is no indication that sci-hub is doing anything of the sort. And the more researchers are using sci-hub, the quicker such a thing would become obvious.
- Freak_NL 8y agoIt would also be telling if certain types of papers known in the field and findable with Google Scholar or similar indices were missing from Sci-Hub. Anyone researching the health effects of sugar would conclude that some research was being withheld from them, not that research concluding that sugar is harmful doesn't exist.