Freedom of Science

The subject of plagiarism and peer review and journals came up again at Not Even Wrong. As usual there were interesting comments. Bee said that she was shocked. Others were shocked that she was shocked. An insider commented that plagiarism is rampant in the academia.

What is wrong with plagiarism?

Only in academia plagiarism is considered a crime. Where science is free plagiarism does not exist. Freedom of science means that ideas do not belong to any one but to humanity.¹

Newton’s original sin

Academic physics is based on Newton’s original sin. Newton stole Kepler’s law. Plagiarism is at the foundation of physics. But Newton did not simply steal Kepler’s rule, he derived it. Scholastic derivation is the fundamental method of scholasticism and it is perfectly legal in physics. In this sense too physics is based on plagiarism. But outside of physics plagiarism — copying and pasting someone’s work and marketing it as one’s own — is not a crime.

Free dissemination of ideas is not a crime 

Please copy and paste whatever you find in this blog and market it as your own. You would be making humanity a favor. Ownership of ideas exists only in academia. The irony is that physicists who publish in peer reviewed journals do not even own their work. The copyright belongs to the journals. A physicist must ask permission of the Journal to reproduce her own work.

Peer review is self-regulation

To understand this issue we must understand that peer review is a self-regulatory rule invented by physicists. Physics is a professional industry. Like all other professionals, lawyers and doctors for instance, physicists will try to cheat their colleagues in order to move up in the hierarchy. The founder of physics was the master of academic turf wars and set the tone for the profession for the centuries to come.

Unless they are regulated all professionals will try to maximize their career returns with any means whatesoever. Even in highly regulated industries such as financial sector professionals still find ways to maximize their financial gain by exploting their constituency and their peers.²

Peer review is not science

We must distinguish between scientific process and the peer review. Peer review is a regulatory process and serves to rate physicists. Peer review is not a required part of the scientific research. The only purpose of the peer review is professional rating of physicists. If physicists cared about science they would publish their research in their blog and discuss it with their peers and other commenters. But no physicist would post any quality research on a blog. There is no professional points to be gained from it.

Physics is the infinite well of forms

One must also distinguish with plagiarism as copying someone’s work and doing physics. Doing physics is drawing legal forms from the infinite well of forms called physics and patching them together. Cut and paste is built into physics.

1. Doctors of physics make their living by hiding knowledge instead of freely sharing it as required by science. [↩]
2. In physics the currency is authority. So physicists cheat to maximize their authority. [↩]

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