In my zeal to be "right" yesterday, I neglected to make a few simple points about science and Aaron Swartz and science publishing in general.
It's transparent bullshit what the fed was doing to him over the JSTOR incident. Illegal and rude his actions may have been, but a slap on the wrist would have been sufficient. Any jail time over a couple of days seems ridiculous. Even then, it seems debatable. They clearly were gunning for him for other reasons.
I learned today, JSTOR is a non-profit institution, formed to help libraries and increase availability to scientific journals, especially online. With this is mind, I think Swartz's stunt was mis-guided. He had many good ideas, but sticking it to an institution that would probably have been happy to have him as a consultant to make information more widely available wasn't one of them.
I don't question the benefits of open access. I don't think journals need to live forever. I question attacking benign institutions with hacktivism instead of, I don't know, being helpful and helping them build a better open source distribution system and transition the peer review process to the new publishing environment. Science would like to continue while we sort out open access. Maybe we could preserve existing peer review and then transition once a new framework is in place, instead of throw it away as bullshit and shrug in answer to "what now?" The problem I have with Schwartz was his method, and his lack of solution to the problem, not the problem he was trying to tackle. And I'm not really comforted by a lot of non-scientists seemingly ready to tear down an existing process that is vital, without a plan to help replace it, or make the transition orderly.
Academia, in general, is widely supportive of open access to their articles. The fact that it's not free does not mean it's a conspiracy to keep it from the public.
Science has a culture just like anything else. The fact that it moves slow is not a conspiracy. It takes time to change habits, and as a culture it is cautious in changing habits and culture for fear of sacrificing accuracy and effective peer review in changing too quickly or too rashly. Also, as a culture it has weaknesses and biases, stubborn older generations, young, bright-eyed idealists and everything else. It also has pretty good checks and balances in the form of peer review and you won't find a more open-minded and curious group of people willing to be swayed by a good argument and evidence anywhere else. I think concerns about science are best addressed straight-fowardly and not with subversive stunts. Unlike most other societal institutions power is diluted, not concentrated in a few people. So conspiracy theories don't make much sense. Science just doesn't have much an authoritarian organizational structure that would enable selfish retention of power and money, unlike the RIAA, Wall Street or government.
I don't think scientists are infallible. Far from it. I'm gearing up to start writing about some fringe science and philosophy and in my reading have decided science and its underlying philosophies have some big blind spots. I don't think science should be regarded as mindlessly authoritative. Scientists are sometimes wrong, and sometimes try to make their studies say more than they do. The community is usually happy to correct them. In any case, any figure with enough experience and knowledge to be considered an authority, should be able to explain themselves when challenged.
I think the interface between scientists and the public is woefully inadequate. Given the completely irrational state of politics and finance and the way the evidence for global warming has been downgraded to the level of an opinion, I think it's done a poor job of making the case not only for the application of reason, evidence, logic and math in solving problems, but in fighting for unpopular theories supported by a metric ton of solid evidence. Scientific journalists and popular science books aren't quite cutting it. Or maybe enough people aren't reading them. Or maybe the good and supported stuff is still too drowned out in pseudo-scientific noise. I'm not sure. But I wish we had a better mechanism for cutting out the noise and I don't think it's impossible.
I'm happy to have my ideas challenged. I don't much like being wrong, but I know there's lots I don't know and I frequently will be. When I fight for an idea, it's because I think it's important. If you think I'm wrong or unfair, I expect you to tell me. That said, I'm still working on a style of argumentation that convinces without beating someone else over the head with my ideas or doesn't get needlessly aggressive.
And that's all I have to say about that.
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