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[Trekkin]

I've read the thoughts presented here, and after thinking about it for a bit, I agree that college is a way to distinguish the dedicated and self-motivated from the rest. However, a fundamental difference of thought keeps me from conceding that any barrier needs to be erected between those who don't have the time or education to 'properly' understand scientific material and the trove of extant scientific literature. If presented with the option of either protecting someone from harm at the expense of learning, or allowing them to try and have the opportunity to fail, but also the opportunity to grow, I would immediately choose freedom over security. This places me at odds with many, many people in many more arenas than this one. Perhaps the only way I can somewhat reconcile the disparity between our schools of thought is to say that I don't have the life experience to see the overall inferiority of such a philosophy. True, individuals may come to harm, but not all, and the ones who don't will be better off for it. Those who do stumble only have themselves to blame. I cannot understand how deferring to individual decision leaves one responsible for the outcome.

Because we're the ones framing the decision for them. I can respect valuing freedom over security as an axiom, but we should be clear on what freedom actually is. I'd argue that it's not only having choices but also an understanding of the consequences of those choices, a way to make your choice informed and meaningful. If I let you pick any of three fruits to eat and don't tell you which one is poisonous, can I really blame you if you "freely" choose to poison yourself? If I label them properly to let you make an informed choice, but in cuneiform (and I know you can't read that), is that ethical? At what point can you be said to be responsible for a choice you didn't know you were making?

That's the thing about science: the hazards are often implicit, assumed to be known by the audience as part of their training. I'd argue we have a duty of care to see to it that people acting on our information are doing so in an informed manner, and that's not a feasible thing to do with this much data and this little training.

True, journals need money to operate, and I'm not in any position to dictate how much that amount should be. I do take umbrage at any instance of a journal charging any more than absolutely necessary or taking the easy way out by charging the reader for the bulk of their operational expenses. I believe their goal should instead be to shift as much weight off the reader as possible. Didn't the free exchange of information spark the industrial revolution? Granted, said revolution had some serious problems from the perspectives of ecology and human rights, but I doubt that excessive paywalls to keep the ignorant masses out would have solved either of those. I'm treading on an example that I know almost nothing about, so I shall say no more.

Well, then, who should pay for them? And bear in mind that in answering, you're also deciding who controls them. As long as the readers control them by paying for them, there's an incentive to make them as useful to the reader as possible. Take that away, and the incentives change, do they not?

[dustywayfarer]

You mentioned earlier that politicians are safe to fund college education because they don't really know how to control it in any real way. I believe understanding what you meant by that would help me understand what you mean by this:
 

Well, then, who should pay for them? And bear in mind that in answering, you're also deciding who controls them. As long as the readers control them by paying for them, there's an incentive to make them as useful to the reader as possible. Take that away, and the incentives change, do they not?

 
Mind explaining? I understand that both are generalizations and aren't true all the time, but what led you to conclude that education is generally not easy to arbitrarily and potentially maliciously control through finances but journals are?

[sluissa]

The one argument you proposed against open access to information (which is misuse of that information by unqualified laymen misunderstanding it) would only be improved by greater access to the same information. Both by allowing qualified professionals (which may not always have personal access to every journal) easier access to double check and correct wrong readings by others and by allowing other laymen the chance to read it on their own, and perhaps see where the flaw in the original argument is. I'm a strong believer in "trust but verify". When you hide the research, you take away people's ability to verify. Where one person might misunderstand this section, and another person might misunderstand another section. Together they might fill in the gaps they both missed.

[Trekkin]

You mentioned earlier that politicians are safe to fund college education because they don't really know how to control it in any real way. I believe understanding what you meant by that would help me understand what you mean by this:
 

Well, then, who should pay for them? And bear in mind that in answering, you're also deciding who controls them. As long as the readers control them by paying for them, there's an incentive to make them as useful to the reader as possible. Take that away, and the incentives change, do they not?

 
Mind explaining? I understand that both are generalizations and aren't true all the time, but what led you to conclude that education is generally not easy to arbitrarily and potentially maliciously control through finances but journals are?

Certainly. First, you must realize that politicians act like point masses; they move according to the sum of the donations acting upon them and rationalize it to their voters after the fact. In the case of college, there's significant pressure from the technology industry to drive down the wages they pay STEM-skilled employees by engineering a massive oversupply, for which reason many merit-based scholarships exist alongside farcical rhetoric about how we've somehow not got enough STEM majors of various types and need all sorts of incentives and programs to get more. As long as that drive exists -- and as long as the pharmaceutical and technology industries exist and are accountable to shareholders, it will -- we can recruit from the interested portion of that pool and get on with our own work while everyone else gets a useless BS and goes out to find their own level, keeping wages low and politicians' owners happy. Our needs dovetail too closely with theirs for it to be worth their while to meddle, and they're collectively intelligent enough to see that and devote the better part of their energies elsewhere.

However, politicians are also owned by all manner of rich pillocks with thoroughly awful ideas about how we'd all be better off in a theocracy of their choosing, as well as corporations who would rather the public not know how much damage they're doing (like Exxon). They too demand a return on their bribes, and being mostly pillocks at heart by virtue of being too rich to have to know anything real, their demands are very blunt and won't be satisfied by any manner of subtle control. They want advisory boards and nonscientists weighing in on "the ethics of science" and all manner of unqualified meddling in the funding and research processes; give them budgetary control over journals, and installing political hacks on the editorial boards to censor unwanted research is such an obvious step that they will specifically demand it of their politicians. It's plain that we have two choices: either journals are private enterprises and therefore marginally protected by their desperate brown-nosing fetishization of unrestrained greed as "the free market system" or they are publicly funded, at which point what is now happening at the EPA will happen everywhere. It's too obvious a step for some idiot not to demand it be taken.

So that's the difference. Our interests align with the sociopathic children that own the world in one case, while being potentially divergent from the interests of more interested sociopathic children in another.

And sluissa: Access is no guarantee of use. How many nonscientists do you know regularly read open-access articles or free textbooks or online courses? Malicious misuse is probable, but I fail to see why giving people more free stuff will encourage them to use it when they don't make use of the free stuff they already have.

[Paxiecrunchle]

I jiust want to chime in that read scientific articles on a regular-ish basis sice ou wanted an example of a non scientist doing so, I also think that more open access to information is a good thing for humanity to the point where it outweighs the risk of misinformation being spread by those misinterpreting those sources since far more people can fact check such charlatans in such a scenario, or at least that's how I feel, it may simply be my optimism talking though.
 That said I am In favor of paywalls in order to fund journals but think that the prices should not exceed what is necessary to maintain the journal in question.

However I am just a poor only partially educated layman so what I think or say is clearly only irrelevant and or dangerous according to trekking, from what I have gathered.