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Re:The rise and fall of scientific authority, and how to bri... by matthewdgreen on Monday March 18, 2019 @09:27PM (#19427245)
1. You use sci-hub. Or write the researchers. Scientists don’t want to keep their work secret nor do they want a “priestly caste”, they want it out there and read. They work like dogs so people on HN can read and actually understand their work and not write about their political feelings instead.

2. Even if you’re not qualified to do the science yourself, you try to reject implausible ideas like the notion that there’s some grand scientific conspiracy against your preferred ideas. If you’re inclined to believe in some scientific result that is also the result that would be vastly preferred by industry and the richest people on earth, then you should be pretty confident that scientists who are willing to consider that outcome are getting resources to investigate it, and if those resources were producing credible results they’d be making waves in the scientific community. And if the scientific community was somehow censoring those credible results, we’d be hearing all about it.

Re:The rise and fall of scientific authority, and how to bri... by weberc2 on Tuesday March 19, 2019 @01:38PM (#19433247)
> try to reject implausible ideas like the notion that there’s some grand scientific conspiracy against your preferred ideas

You mean like academics who push blank slatism to prop up dubious political outcomes? Or people who push notions of racist math or sexist physics?

The questions are 1) how/why do our institutions allow these frauds to be so prevalent/powerful 2) how do we make the necessary changes 3) how do we help laypeople distinguish between ideologues and real academics?

Re:The rise and fall of scientific authority, and how to bri... by logseman on Tuesday March 19, 2019 @06:06AM (#19429460)
Sci-Hub isn't exactly easy to use or recommended by the larger community a grad student is likely to encounter.
Re:The rise and fall of scientific authority, and how to bri... by matthewdgreen on Tuesday March 19, 2019 @09:31AM (#19430601)
If you're smart enough to use HN's interface, you're smart enough to Google/copy/paste a DOI string into the sci-hub website. Not a criticism of you personally, but right now it's absurdly easy to bypass scientific paywalls if you're even slightly motivated.

PS Scientists almost uniformly hate the predatory scientific publishing system, want it destroyed, and aren't trying to prevent you from reading their work.