In the comments on our posts, a discussion periodically flares up that deserves its own post. Frankly, we can even thank the skeptic “Sperry UNIVAC,” who constantly comments on our publications, for highlighting the problem so vividly. A classic conflict between two worldviews – institutional and free (or, as you might put it, hacker –) has emerged. The core of the complaint is simple and timeless: “Where’s your notarized printout? Where’s the publication in a peer-reviewed journal? If there’s no article, then there’s no science, and you’re just nobody.”
Let’s take a deep breath and break this down without aggression, from the perspective of common sense and freedom. There’s a dangerous misconception that science only happens when serious guys in white coats gather in an office, write complicated text, send it to other guys, and they put a “APPROVED” stamp on it. However, science is a method, a way of knowing the world through proposing and testing hypotheses. If I mix two chemicals in my garage and get a new molecule, that molecule will exist objectively. It doesn’t care whether I have a diploma, whether an ethics committee approved it, or if respected professor gave it a like. Reality doesn’t require bureaucratic validation.
Appealing to authority is not an argument! Our opponent writes: “I know biologists, I can ask them.” But the history of science is a graveyard of authoritative opinions that shattered against the enthusiasm of practitioners. The Wright brothers didn’t publish preprints before their flight. They fixed bicycles. And the “serious scientists” of that time wrote treatises about the impossibility of heavier-than-air flying machines. Steve Wozniak assembled the first Apple in a garage, not at IBM’s laboratory. If they had waited for review by “equal scholars,” we’d still be riding horses and doing calculations on abacuses.
We, libertarians, believe in spontaneous order and decentralization. We believe that a monopoly on truth is the most harmful of all monopolies. Modern academic science is in deep crisis. Firstly, it’s a reproducibility crisis – countless “peer-reviewed” articles cannot be replicated. Secondly, the influence of politics and grants – scientists often research what they are paid for, not what needs to be researched. Finally, gatekeeping – the system is structured to weed out “outsiders,” even if they have breakthrough ideas.
As for our project, the search for drugs to enhance the mechanism of violence inhibition isn’t being done for a line in a resume or an impact factor (citation index), but rather to solve a problem. Although we don’t have a “body” in the form of an article in Nature (although the experiments we’ve conducted on animals essentially repeat experiments from such articles), we have data, experiments, openness to discussion about substance, not form, and a proposal for anyone to verify what we say – all instructions are available on our website.
Of course, the skeptic is right in one thing: methodology matters. You can’t just drink a smoothie and say “I beat aging.” There needs to be control, a sample, honesty – things we strive for. But demanding that enthusiasts fully comply with the bureaucratic rituals of a large academy is like demanding that an indie game developer follow Ubisoft’s corporate standards.
We live in the age of Open Source. Linus Torvalds released Linux not into a scientific journal, but into a mailing list. And this changed the world. Biocachers today are computer hackers from the 80s. They may call them freaks and marginals. But it’s often in “garages” that what will become mainstream is born. We respect academic science, but we don’t make it an idol. If you value a “game” (an article, a review, a status) – go to the university library. If you value “riding” (searching, trying, failing and finding) – welcome to the biocachers. And better argue about data, dosages, receptors, rather than measuring yourself by degrees and connections.
P.S. Our critic also mentioned Perelman, however the irony is that Grigory Jakovlevich just threw the whole academic community into hell with his rules, prizes, and rituals, publishing a proof simply on the internet. So thanks for the example, he’s playing for us!
