Science Fictions: How Fraud, Bias, Negligence, and Hype Undermine the Search for Truth

by Stuart Ritchie

In 2019 the Nobel Prize-winning biologist and journal editor Randy Schekman compared the fees paid by the University of California to two different publishers: the non-profit National Academy of Sciences and the for-profit Elsevier.67 Per individual scientific paper downloaded, the National Academy of Science subscription cost the university $0.04. The Elsevier per-paper fee was $1.06. More than twenty-six times more expensive. Researchers from across the world are pouring millions into Elsevier’s coffers, and indeed billions into those of for-profit publishers in general. What additional service are they getting for all this money? It’s not obvious: the National Academy of Sciences offers essentially the same services at its journals as Elsevier, or even better. The time and expertise of peer reviewers is the crux of the whole scientific system, providing the critical analysis that’s required for science to progress. Yet those reviewers are volunteers and aren’t employed by the journals. They are free labour, so they clearly can’t be what justifies the cost. Rather, Elsevier and other for-profit publishers are engaging in what economists call rent-seeking: gaining more profits without providing more value.68 One highly critical investigation of the scientific publication system noted its absurdities: It is as if the New Yorker or the Economist demanded that journalists write and edit each other’s work for free, and asked the government to foot the bill. Outside observers ...