Björn Brembs

Reading the [reactionary defense of the digital stone
age](https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.ade8028) in AAAS'
flagship magazine *Science*, I felt reminded of the now infamous "[Make
American Science Great
Again](https://medium.com/@brembs/learned-societies-lean-to-the-green-f904336f51ad)"
[letter](https://presspage-production-content.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/1508/coalitionletteropposinglowerembargoes12.18.2019-533032.pdf)
to Trump and all the [other public statements by scholarly
societies](https://twitter.com/mbeisen/status/1563866295526834176) over
the last 30 years on how this internet thing is a threat to their
revenue and hence must be opposed.

The development of the internet by scholarly institutions should have
been the opening bell for a broader thought process within scholarly
societies of how this new technology may revolutionize scholarly
discourse. After all, the purpose and mission of scholarly societies is
the building and maintenance of communities and fields of study. Nobody
was more aware of that than Henry Oldenburg when he founded the first
scientific journal for his society in 1665, the "Philosophical
Transactions of the Royal Society". Granted, with the journal lagging
the invention of movable type and the Gutenberg-type printing technology
by about 200 years, Oldenburg wasn't really taking advantage of what one
would call modern technology, but his Royal Society was only founded in
1660, so he clearly reacted quickly to the needs of his members.

The same cannot be said of his successors in today's many scholarly
societies. Prioritizing revenue, it was not lost to them that
technologies such as email and browsers would allow them to copy their
mail and journal distributions onto a digital format, at huge savings.
Judging from their public messaging since then, for the exact same
financial reasons, they have refused to invest even the smallest amount
of innovation or progressive thought into what broader opportunities
internet technology might provide for their mission going forward.
Instead, it looks as if all of that intellectual energy flowed into
conserving outdated concepts and demonizing digital progress into a
threat for every scholarly society's revenue. For nearly three decades
now, scholarly societies, collectively, appear to have been preoccupied
with looking back, at the expense of looking forward. Not even after
2006, when the term "social media" should have provided an etymological
prompt even for the dimmest of professional "society" administrators,
was there a change of direction. Apparently, the best some of our
societies can do these days is installing forum technology from the late
1990s and call it "[community](https://community.sfn.org/)".

Much has been written about the consequences this reactionary attitude
has had on the public accessibility of the scholarship these societies
have been publishing. Here, I would like to speculate on perhaps much
more pernicious consequences.

Ever since the infamous "[Flame
Wars](https://timeline.com/flame-wars-early-cyberbullying-1c509aa5ffad)"
in the Usenet/Newsgroups of the 1990s (and probably already before
that), one aspect of online discourse had become obvious for nearly any
user: online discourse can (and sometimes inevitably will) escalate
rapidly into one that nobody would call 'civil' any more. Passionate
debate is something scholars have been actively participating in and
contributing to for centuries. From early rivalries of 'gentleman'
scientists, via back-and-forth publications of journal articles,
editorials or commentaries to later antagonism between authors, editors
and reviewers, there have been numerous and varied occasions for
learning how to pursue reasoned discourse in a productive, scholarly
way. It is impossible to predict which direction online discourse would
have taken, or which functionalities current social media would have
implemented, had scholarly societies perceived online discourse as an
opportunity for their mission rather than a threat to their revenue.
With scholarly communication far from being perfect, it is also not
clear whether academics ever were in any position to claim superior
knowledge. However, it also seems unlikely that early, systematic and
competent engagement by scholarly communities with the goal to
facilitate scholarly discourse in a way that minimizes the chances of
escalation and radicalization could never have changed the course of
history in any conceivable way.

Looking back 30 years, it is difficult the escape the impression that
civic discourse has become less civil. The road from alternative facts
to online mobs to death threats and real world political violence and
bloodshed has shortened significantly. Radicalization of large sections
of voters and a more general drifting apart of political positions over
time is not specific to the internet age, but it appears to be
facilitated by social media giving marginal groups or ideas an audience
they lacked before. The capability of bringing marginal ideas to a
broader audience cuts both ways: ideas that modern society benefits from
can be amplified just as much as those it thought it had better left in
the dustbin of history. Scholarly debate is all about deciding which
hypotheses and theories should be kept and pursued and which should be
abandoned. Sifting facts from alternative facts and how to bring the
former to prominence and the latter into obscurity is a problem that
could have tackled 30 years ago, if the new internet had been a focus of
thought for the societies who claim to exist to foster scholarly
communication, rather than use scholars to generate revenue to pay their
staff. In order to be productive, all scholarly discussions need to be
as passionate as necessary to be engaging and thought-provoking, but
also as civil as possible to not provoke anger and aggression.
Individual personalities vary and this topic comes up in various online
discussions time and again, but collectively it appears there is a
fairly broad Goldilocks zone of scholarly discourse where most scholars
feel welcome, comfortable and discussions are productive.

So while nobody can know how civic discourse would look today had
scholarly societies leaned less to the green, I'd argue that at least
now, 30 years later, would be a good time to stop, take pause and think
hard if the luddite path really is the one scholarly societies want to
keep marching on. Personally, I'd go even further: I blame the majority
of our scholarly societies that in these past three decades they have
put their revenue before their mission. This perverse prioritization has
not only hampered scholarly communication in general and the
accessibility of scholarly articles specifically, it has also caused the
scholarly community to miss a window of opportunity where it could have
had an outsize influence on civic society at large by influencing the
means and rules of communication. Some may argue that this paints an
exaggerated picture of an actually very limited influence of the
scholarly community beyond academia, but given the role these
institutions played in developing the internet, I fear such arguments
may be motivated by the desire to deflect responsibility. It is my
impression that the collective digital torpor of academia, especially
after it had implemented the internet, leaving the reins to corporations
and political activists, is partly to blame for the way things are
online today. In other words, is it possible that, if scholarly
societies had not been so preoccupied with defending their revenue at
all costs, they could have been able to assume a central role in the
development of social technologies and help shape the way they operate?

This last aspect deserves a final paragraph. The large, influential
societies have traditionally replied that their revenue is important
either for their mission in general, or for their ECR services, their
lobbyism or any of their other activities. Looking at the political
situation in the leading scientific nations of the world today and
beyond, it appears that very early investment of intellectual energy
into the means and rules of public discourse and how to facilitate
productive reasoning and rationality, at a time when they were still in
their digital infancy, would possibly have accomplished more than all
the dollars, euros and pounds poured into campaigns, political lobbyism
or awareness weeks combined. As such, scholarly societies have not only
failed their members and scholarship writ large, they have also missed a
golden opportunity to maybe help make also the world outside of academia
a little bit more evidence-based.


Reading the reactionary defense of the digital stone age in AAAS’ flagship magazine
<em>
 Science
</em>
, I felt reminded of the now infamous “Make American Science Great Again” letter to Trump and all the other public statements by scholarly societies over the last 30 years on how this internet thing is a threat to their revenue and hence must be opposed.

Messaggi di Rogue Scholar

Scholarly societies partly to blame for post-truth age?