What’s the best way to stay healthy
in the face of so much conflicting nutrition information?
Well, ideally, you would go to the source.
The gold standard;
the peer-reviewed medical literature.
Read through stacks of the latest medical journals.
But who’s got time for that?
I do!
Welcome to the Nutrition Facts Podcast.
I’m your host, Dr. Michael Greger.
Did you know that medical journals can cost tens of thousands per year
for a subscription and even access to a single online article
can cost dozens of dollars.
But the founder of the website Sci-Hub,
a woman known as “The Robin Hood of Science”,
set out to change that. Here’s her story.
The first issues of the first scientific journals were published back in 1665,
in which it was noted things like, hey, it looks like there's a spot on Jupiter,
thanks to new telescopes invented by a certain Mr. Newton,
whose friend Halley described a comet.
The same journal that reported that oranges and lemons could cure scurvy,
and something in willow tree bark could bring down a fever.
Also published, a letter by some guy over in the colonies
about playing with kites during lightning storms,
and an account of a remarkable 8-year-old musician by the name of Amadeus,
and within this last century some sketchings of the structure
of some molecule called DNA.
A journal still in publication to this day, 350 years later,
available now online and in print
for the low, low subscription price of only $6,666 a year.
As you can imagine, the high price of journals
leaves doctors in developing countries
missing out on relevant information about health.
At that time, back in the '90s, there was optimism that by 2004 at least,
the problem of access to life-saving scientific information would be solved.
But 2004 came and went, setting their sights for 2015.
Surely by then we can achieve health information for all,
as lack of access remained a major barrier.
Realistically, only scientists at really big, well-funded universities
in the developed world may have full access to published research,
and as prices rise even higher, even that may no longer be true.
You know there's a problem when even Harvard,
as in $30-billion-dollar- endowment Harvard,
claims that costs for research journals are now prohibitive.
Meanwhile, the journal publishers are raking in billions
charging institutions up to $35,000 a year per journal,
and charging individuals online per article.
So you have a family member diagnosed with some disease and you go online.
You can read all sorts of internet drek,
but if you want to see the actual science, it can get expensive.
And you likely paid for the research.
Tax dollars pour in to fund the research,
and then you can't get access to the research you paid for.
It's like if a nice little city park was built,
but then some private firm came in and started to charge admission.
That's roughly how it works with scientific research,
and this conversion of public research dollars into private publishing profits
has long been a source of discontent.
The publishers don't end up paying anything for the research.
They get it for free; they don't pay the researchers anything.
So we pay for it, and then we have to pay for it again if we want to read it.
So it can end up with science as a profit system, rather than science as knowledge.
Enter Alexandra Elbakyan, nicknamed by some the Robin Hood of Science.
It's the story of how one researcher made nearly every scientific paper ever published
available for free to everyone, anywhere in the world.
Named by perhaps the most prestigious scientific journal in the world
as one of the top 10 people who mattered the most in science in 2016,
Alexandra started out as just a frustrated grad student in Kazakhstan,
unable to access the scholarly papers she needed for her research.
Once she figured out how to circumvent all the paywalls,
she started a website, now at https://sci-hub.st/
to remove all barriers in the way of science
by giving away the world's scientific, medical, and nutrition literature for free.
"What she did is nothing short of awesome," said one researcher.
"Lack of access to the scientific literature is a massive injustice,
and she fixed it with one fell swoop."
Alexandra Elbakyan, a 20- something year old grad student,
is operating a free searchable online database
of nearly 50 million stolen scholarly journal articles,
shattering the $10 billion-per-year paywall of academic publishers,
an awe-inspiring act of altruism,
or a massive criminal enterprise, depending on whom you ask.
Now up to 60 million papers, providing access to nearly all scholarly literature.
Via its websites sci-hub.cc, sci-hub.io, and sci-hub.ac,
Sci-Hub was able to fill 99.3% of articles requests, all for free.
A sister site, Library Genesis, at libgen.io, distributes scientific books and textbooks
for free, more than a million of them, also illegally.
Who's downloading pirated papers?
Everyone, concluded this feature in the prestigious journal, Science.
A survey of potential users suggests for most
it's not some grand political statement,
but rather that's the only way they have access,
or feel it's just so much quicker and easier.
Even those who have legitimate institutional access may still choose to use Sci-Hub
because there's just so many fewer hoops to jump through.
So you can imagine how sites like Sci-Hub may
be filling publishers that charge for access
with roaring, existential panic, and they're not taking it lying down.
Elsevier, the largest publisher, notorious for demanding researchers take down
free copies of their own work,
sued Sci-Hub, the Library Genesis project, Alexandra,
and 99 John Does for copyright infringement, a willful disregard of Elsevier's rights.
Kind of hard to take the moral high ground, though,
when you're effectively an international arms dealer.
Can you imagine a tobacco company publishing health journals?
Surely the company's business mission would be impossibly confused:
would the company be in the business of killing people or keeping them alive?
But if you can't imagine that absurdity, well, welcome to Elsevier,
which in addition to publishing medical journals
is also involved in the global arms trade,
running arms fairs where things like cluster bombs are sold,
leading to medical journal editorial boards calling for a boycott
of Elsevier's warmongering, health damaging business practices.
In response to the lawsuit, Alexandra wrote a letter to the judge.
She wanted to make it clear that not only did Elsevier not create those papers,
but that they don't pay researchers a penny.
So it's not like pirated movie or song where the content creator is losing out,
noting that no researcher had ever complained that she was handing out their research.
In fact, scientific authors are typically thrilled
when their work gets more out into the world.
That's the whole point of science: to be shared and built upon.
In one fell swoop, Alexandra created a portal
likely offering a greater level of access to science
than any institution on Earth in history, literally opening up a world of knowledge.
And she's not backing down, citing in her defense Article 27
of the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights,
that everyone should have the right to freely participate in the cultural life
of the community, including sharing in scientific advancement and its benefits.
She realizes she could be arrested and extradited to the U.S. to face charges.
She is fully aware that another computer prodigy-turned-advocate,
Aaron Swartz, was arrested on similar charges after mass downloading academic papers.
Facing devastating financial penalties and jail time, Swartz hanged himself.
Note: since I recorded the narration for that episode,
Sci-Hub.io was shut down,
but the site can currently be reached at sci-hub.st.
It can also be reached at five other domains should that one get yanked, too.
You can always see the updated active link list
on the Sci-Hub Wikipedia page.
We would love it if you could share with us your stories
about reinventing your health through evidence-based nutrition.
Go to nutritionfacts.org/testimonials.
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To see any graphs, charts, graphics, images, or studies mentioned here,
please go to the Nutrition Facts Podcast landing page.
There you’ll find all the detailed information you need –
plus, links to all of the sources we cite for each of these topics.
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