I think the next sentence here contains important context: > They missed flaws in how the research was done or whether it was pseudoscience masquerading as ser

I think the next sentence here contains important context: > They missed flaws in how the research was done or whether it was pseudoscience masquerading as serious scholarship. If I wanted to get a well-formatted and coherent (i.e. not prima facie false) paper into e.g. arXiv, I really only need to be endorsed by a qualified individual or get automatic endorsement via my affiliation with some institution. Laypeople do not understand just how low the barrier to entry here is, that unproven / poor quality / outright falsified research can easily make its way to preprint archives. Including a link to such research causes your comment to take the form of a well-researched, scientific argument without it necessarily being actual science. So I don't think the only way to combat this is restricting access to research. One approach that immediately comes to mind would be to show a banner on early preprints, especially those that have zero authors eligible to be endorsers. Or just always show a banner for users that aren't logged in, reminding them that the content hasn't been peer reviewed. Who knows.