Open Access and Zeno's Paralysis

Arun: "We should try to understand why many people have problems in understanding what we think is simple English. For example, Lord Sainsbury, you say, has misunderstood the RCUK proposal as well as the earlier Select Committee proposal. He is [ Parliamentary Under Secretary of State for Science and Innovation] in the UK Government and obviously must be an educated person. And English is his mother tongue...

"My point is scientists, like the British Minister, are highly educated and yet they find it difficult to appreciate what to you and me appear to be simple.

"We must think through this phenomenon and come up with a good workable solution."

(1): The premises of Open Access are wrong. There is in fact either (1a) no need for all those who do not currently have access to have access, or, if there is a need, then there is (1b) no way for all of them them to have access, or, if there is a way for all of them to have access, then (1c) it is either illegal or financially nonviable.

(2): (1) above is false, but people do not know how or why.

(3): (1) above is false, and people know how and why, but they have reasons for preferring that it should not come to pass anyway, hence they treat (1) as if it were true.

My own hunch is that (2) is closest to the truth. There may be some in the publishing community who are closer to (3), but I do not believe that it is they who are holding back OA. OA is provided by and for the research community. It is in reality 100% in their hands, and always has been. Hence if they are not yet providing it, it is certain that this is not because of publishers. It is because of (2): the research community does not (yet) know that (1) is false, nor how, nor why.

And if you want a functional analogy to this state of anosognosia (a neurological condition in which a patient -- with intelligence fully intact -- keeps systematically failing to perceive what is amiss, and what to do about it), here is an example.

A professor, an intelligent professor, with full command of the English language, has a stroke that leaves all of his intellectual faculties unimpaired but (temporarily) paralyses the left side of his body, leaving it unable to move or feel. You visit the professor in his hospital bed and he is of course perfectly lucid, sharp as ever, reading the latest edition of PLoS Biology, etc., but his left leg is dangling off the side of his bed.

You ask him "What is happening here?"

He asks what you mean.

"I mean this" (pointing to the leg).

The professor seems not to have noticed it, but now that you draw it to his attention to it, he says: "Oh, that. It's a leg. It was in my bed, so I pushed it out."

Astonished, you reply: "But it's your leg!"

Professor (not astonished, but puzzled): "My leg?"

"Yes, your leg. Look, I'll start from the foot and trace it up: you see it is connected to and leads to your body!"

Professor (still puzzled): "Quite so, I suppose you are right."

"Here, I will put it back in your bed for you: But are you in the habit of seeing disembodied legs, and merely pushing them out of your bed without asking any further questions?"

Professor (still puzzled): "No, of course not, you are quite right. How silly of me. I don't know what came over me!"

The conversation continues, on other matters. Ninety seconds later, the professor pushes his leg out of the bed, without missing a beat. -- Anosognosia.

And that is what it has felt like for years, painstakingly explaining OA and self-archiving to researchers, till they nod with apparent understanding, only to relapse within 90 seconds. I've even given the syndrome a name -- Zeno's Paralysis" -- and prescribed the FAQ to be ingested whenever any of its 32 symptoms (so far known) manifest themselves.

Let us hope that an appeal to their employers and funders will be more successful. After all, it is not their leg that is in question. Perhaps, like hospital attendants, they can see to it that researchers do the right thing. Then the patients can go back to reading and writing their journals...

Chronicling the epidemiology and time-course of the pandemic can then be left to the psychohistorians.

Cheers, Stevan

PS I suspect that conflating/confusing green and gold will turn out to have played a big part in the long road road to the optimal/inevitable recovery.