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> The logic has fallen apart. Note the words used in the argument: "could have a common cause", "without necessarily being a cause". The logic that fails is t

by kgwgk 6y ago

> The logic has fallen apart. Note the words used in the argument: "could have a common cause", "without necessarily being a cause". The logic that fails is the one that depends on a common cause being impossible and concludes that one thing is necessarily causing the other. (It plausably may do so to some extent, but that paper doesn't prove that nor gives a good estimate of the effect.)

thaumasiotes 6y ago
No, I specifically agree that they have a common cause. Nobody's depending on a common cause being impossible. But they cannot be coincidentally related by a common cause！ This is clearly a causality chain: 1. interest in the paper -> reading the paper 2. reading the paper -> citing the paper It is not: 1. interest in the paper -> reading the paper 2. interest in the paper -> citing the paper You can't seriously believe that interest in the paper can lead to citations of the paper without being intermediated through reading the paper! And that intermediary position of Sci-Hub means that, in the model described, it cannot possibly fail to be a cause of citations. That would be the same argument as "one game downloaded through piracy equals one lost sale". If you don't believe that one illegal download = one lost sale, you've immediately admitted that piracy is a cause of additional gameplay.
- kgwgk 6y ago
  The point is that the paper does not (and can not) distinguish one situation from the other. Edit: your diagrams are too simplistic anyway. Papers can be read elsewhere. Citations have more causes than readership and its incremental effect will be heterogeneous.
- oefrha 6y ago
  OP of higher-positioned thread "slamming" the paper. > And that intermediary position of Sci-Hub means that, in the model described, it cannot possibly fail to be a cause of citations. No, downloads don't automatically lead to citations. The possible scenario where every single citation came from another channel (arXiv, ScienceDirect, SpringerLink, JSTOR, what have you) is entirely consistent with the paper's findings. I for one happen to be a scientist, I don't think I ever cited a paper I downloaded from Sci-Hub, but I've certainly grabbed a few papers from other fields on Sci-Hub; those downloads did not contribute to citation stats at all. In addition, the paper is trying to conclude "limited access to publications may limit some scientific research from achieving its full impact" by comparing papers available on Sci-Hub to, guess what, papers available on Sci-Hub (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23710992 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23710992). I really need some solid convincing to accept this leap in logic. I don't necessarily disagree with the conclusion, in fact I think it's in a way kinda obvious (there should be an effect, however small it is), but the paper's analysis adds nothing to support it. I'm just not a fan of shoddy analysis, whether I like the conclusion or not (otherwise I'd better be a politician or lawyer).
  - thaumasiotes 6y ago
    > I don't necessarily disagree with the conclusion, in fact I think it's in a way kinda obvious (there should be an effect, however small it is) Agreed. > but the paper's analysis adds nothing to support it. I don't quite agree with this. The paper demonstrates that more realized access is related to more citations. I think you can make a solid argument that more potential access is related to more realized access. That connection is enough to count the analysis as "supporting" the conclusion ("more potential access ~ more citations") at a level which is greater than zero. Support isn't proof.
    - notahacker 6y ago
      If the null hypothesis is that research professionals' discovery of and access to papers interesting and relevant enough to their own paper to cite is independent from the paper also being available on Scihub, I don't think the paper's demonstration that papers interesting enough to garner future citations are [predictably] also more popular on Scihub than those which aren't does much to support its rejection. There's no reason to believe the correlation between realized access and future citations isn't exactly the same or stronger for subscription platforms or paper copies in university libraries, and nothing in the paper itself to suggest that researchers publishing in top tier journals might discover and access papers exclusively through those methods rather Scihub. I'm sure the frequency with which papers are referenced in undergraduate essays also correlates with future citations in top tier academic journals, but any paper arguing for a causal Undergraduate Essay Effect on citations in top journals would be laughed off, especially if they made claims like 'revealed the importance of undergraduate scholarship in almost doubling the number of [top tier journal] citations of articles mentioned by undergrads' [FWIW I don't think the direct and indirect impact of papers being accessible Scihub on professional research work is literally zero, but this paper does nothing to indicate otherwise.]

by kgwgk 6y ago

thaumasiotes 6y ago

No, I specifically agree that they have a common cause. Nobody's depending on a common cause being impossible. But they cannot be coincidentally related by a common cause！ This is clearly a causality chain: 1. interest in the paper -> reading the paper 2. reading the paper -> citing the paper It is not: 1. interest in the paper -> reading the paper 2. interest in the paper -> citing the paper You can't seriously believe that interest in the paper can lead to citations of the paper without being intermediated through reading the paper! And that intermediary position of Sci-Hub means that, in the model described, it cannot possibly fail to be a cause of citations. That would be the same argument as "one game downloaded through piracy equals one lost sale". If you don't believe that one illegal download = one lost sale, you've immediately admitted that piracy is a cause of additional gameplay.

kgwgk 6y ago
The point is that the paper does not (and can not) distinguish one situation from the other. Edit: your diagrams are too simplistic anyway. Papers can be read elsewhere. Citations have more causes than readership and its incremental effect will be heterogeneous.
oefrha 6y ago
OP of higher-positioned thread "slamming" the paper. > And that intermediary position of Sci-Hub means that, in the model described, it cannot possibly fail to be a cause of citations. No, downloads don't automatically lead to citations. The possible scenario where every single citation came from another channel (arXiv, ScienceDirect, SpringerLink, JSTOR, what have you) is entirely consistent with the paper's findings. I for one happen to be a scientist, I don't think I ever cited a paper I downloaded from Sci-Hub, but I've certainly grabbed a few papers from other fields on Sci-Hub; those downloads did not contribute to citation stats at all. In addition, the paper is trying to conclude "limited access to publications may limit some scientific research from achieving its full impact" by comparing papers available on Sci-Hub to, guess what, papers available on Sci-Hub (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23710992 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23710992). I really need some solid convincing to accept this leap in logic. I don't necessarily disagree with the conclusion, in fact I think it's in a way kinda obvious (there should be an effect, however small it is), but the paper's analysis adds nothing to support it. I'm just not a fan of shoddy analysis, whether I like the conclusion or not (otherwise I'd better be a politician or lawyer).
- thaumasiotes 6y ago
  > I don't necessarily disagree with the conclusion, in fact I think it's in a way kinda obvious (there should be an effect, however small it is) Agreed. > but the paper's analysis adds nothing to support it. I don't quite agree with this. The paper demonstrates that more realized access is related to more citations. I think you can make a solid argument that more potential access is related to more realized access. That connection is enough to count the analysis as "supporting" the conclusion ("more potential access ~ more citations") at a level which is greater than zero. Support isn't proof.
  - notahacker 6y ago
    If the null hypothesis is that research professionals' discovery of and access to papers interesting and relevant enough to their own paper to cite is independent from the paper also being available on Scihub, I don't think the paper's demonstration that papers interesting enough to garner future citations are [predictably] also more popular on Scihub than those which aren't does much to support its rejection. There's no reason to believe the correlation between realized access and future citations isn't exactly the same or stronger for subscription platforms or paper copies in university libraries, and nothing in the paper itself to suggest that researchers publishing in top tier journals might discover and access papers exclusively through those methods rather Scihub. I'm sure the frequency with which papers are referenced in undergraduate essays also correlates with future citations in top tier academic journals, but any paper arguing for a causal Undergraduate Essay Effect on citations in top journals would be laughed off, especially if they made claims like 'revealed the importance of undergraduate scholarship in almost doubling the number of [top tier journal] citations of articles mentioned by undergrads' [FWIW I don't think the direct and indirect impact of papers being accessible Scihub on professional research work is literally zero, but this paper does nothing to indicate otherwise.]