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260 points the-mitr | 4 comments | | HN request time: 0.208s | source
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megaloblasto ◴[] No.45051186[source]
I have to read a lot of papers for work. Sometimes 2 or 3 a day. Often when I find one I'm interested in, they want $60 to read the one paper. If I have to read one paper a day, that's about $20,000 a year just to stay up to date with the science.

That's ridiculous. Thankfully someone is breaking down these barriers to science.

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kleiba ◴[] No.45051583[source]
Replace "paper" with anything else you consume in your everyday life. I know it's an unpopular opinion, but to me, if there's something offered to you for a certain price, and you're not ready to pay that price, the alternative should be to either get something comparable that's cheaper (hardly possible with scientific papers) or, unfortunately, abstain from getting that thing at all.

I don't see how "what they're charging is ridiculous, and the money isn't even going to the authors, so it's okay for me to get the papers through sci-hub" is morally justified.

Independent of the above: if it's for work, your employer should pay for the paper access (unless you're self-employed, of course).

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1. Eddy_Viscosity2 ◴[] No.45052524[source]
> Replace "paper" with anything else you consume in your everyday life.

You eat apples, but if you replaced "apples" with "human babies", then by eating them you would be committing murder and cannibalism. It's an unpopular opinion, but this logical argument proves you are a murdering cannibalistic monster.

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2. megaloblasto ◴[] No.45053138[source]
Oh my god. I gotta stop eating apples.
3. kleiba ◴[] No.45053381[source]
Er, what?
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4. Eddy_Viscosity2 ◴[] No.45053927[source]
In the original comment, the argument is that if you replace papers with something else then you see that it stealing. But if you replace papers with something else, then you are no longer talking about scientific papers. So this is a flawed argument. The baby eating is to demonstrate how flawed.