Fundamentally, what we need is leadership. But we break with the chorus of most #OpenScience initiatives here and emphasize very strongly that this leadership must come from funders and institutions.

We researchers can support the battle, but we cannot lead the charge. Funders hold the cards.

6/n

More fundamentally, every active scientist has been brought up in a system where The Drain was already normalized.

This system hasn't always existed. For-profit publishers are a recent invention. Their value proposition has always been awful, and now they are actively eroding trust in science.

5/n

Scientists operate on principles of good faith. But this is just ridiculous. If you, dear reader, take nothing else away from The Drain paper, it is that publishers cannot be invited to the table any longer.

They can participate and carve a space, but they can't be part of shaping policy.

3/n

This is how you deflect blame, you help the occasional “good one” succeed and then use it to deflect criticism.

They require this of IRTA’s but come on.

Many scientists (including me) have viewed AI review warily. But responses to trials of qed have been very positive. I was impressed with its output, which was developed by iteration with a large number of human reviewers. 3/n

Authors can now send papers directly from bioRxiv to qed and get feedback on improvements they should make – ‘gaps’ that require more work or revision of the claims. 2/n

Hmm... not buying it. Those kinds of epidemiological studies are horribly confounded by all sorts of factors that can't be controlled for.

I was just happy I got the i correct