The fate of For All Mankind’s Skylab project was a fun twist, and possibly one of the least realistic. Yes, it has some things in common with what it became in their timeline, but would they have done that? No way.
At Duke University, it seemed that everyone on the campus network had access to most research available online.
When I left, it left a whole in my life of the wealth of human knowledge that should be available to everyone.
If there were only a few things on earth that should be unrestricted, it would be good research.
Today, in the public domain, there is a abhorrence and abundance of fake research, driven by misguided funding and attempts to excel in the academic community or perhaps to secure competitive employment in places in the world where ethics are lacking.
I don’t stand up for hackers typically, but I support this type of ethical hacking of the last bastion of our future with the hope that humanity will see the problem in its whole and have governments that can afford it to work out a deal to somehow at arm’s length fund reputable journals and fix the scourge before we waste untold amounts of money related to basing attempts at honest and good scientific study on bad research which has evolved due to the high cost of accessing good research and attaining visibility as research that is approved and submitted for review, with each revision obvious and available, and finally take this seriously.