In my opinion, defamation law is not fit for purpose, it's far too easy for rich people with axes to grind to sue their accusers in an attempt to stifle speech

In my opinion, defamation law is not fit for purpose, it's far too easy for rich people with axes to grind to sue their accusers in an attempt to stifle speech by putting a price on their words. Anti-SLAPP motions are supposed to fix this by allowing fee shifting, but they only exist in a handful of states, and I'm still not 100% sure how effective that alone can be at restoring freedom of speech[0]. Until such time as that legal system is fixed, the scientific community should take countermeasures against the law. I'm calling for some kind of universal default clause[1]. If you sue scientific accusers for defamation, you're not doing science anymore, so you should be automatically fired from or kicked out of any scientific institution you're a member of. You could obviously restrain this to only unproven allegations - i.e. get a scientific board to call the allegations bullshit first and then you can bring it to a court. But the pathway of allegations of fraud becoming "put up $100k in legal fees or shut up" is not acceptable in a free society. [0] Related note: do you remember when Donald Trump was saying he wanted to "open up our libel laws" to make it EASIER to pull this shit!? [1] "Universal default" is a concept in banking that treats defaulting on any loan the same as defaulting on the specific loan mentioned in the contract.