Where Is the Outrage?
After decades of activism, OA advocates fall silent when science is silenced
The world of scientific publishing is so bizarre and upside-down these days. Decades of access advocacy have gotten us to the point where the US government can shitcan studies about vaccines they don’t like — taxpayer-funded studies by government scientists and others — and nobody says a peep. Proven public health interventions get sidelined, and none of these groups steps forward.
Not SPARC.
Not SSP.
Not CSE.
Not OASPA.
Not NISO.
Nobody.
The oppression of science for the convenience of techno-authoritarians and techno-bureaucrats is now baked into our world, and that’s a very bad thing.
Instead of pro-science brands raising the alarm about science being squelched by unqualified chowderheads like Jay Bhattacharya and RFK, Jr., it’s endless press releases about deals with AI companies, Rube Goldberg “studies” of hallucinated AI outputs from case report poetry readings, and the importation of more technologists into strategic roles for no clear reason other than to keep walking the profit plank to pursue the Singularity.
We’ve lost our collective way. Instead of paywalls, we have Cloudflare walls. Instead of talking to scientists, we’re swanning over AI bubbly. And instead of fighting for good science to reach the public sphere, we’re writing about mental health, our latest licensing deals, and how more fake papers are going to prop up more profits for more AI deals until the pile of bullcrap reaches the sky and transports us to a higher plane.
As if.
Maybe fighting for evidence-based policies that could help get more kids vaccinated, more cancer drugs approved, keep babies from bleeding out at birth, and help people with chronic diseases (like RFK, Jr.) would be a better use of our time and efforts than all this technocentric nonsense.
It’s sad to see things have gone this far off the rails.
