What can you learn about repression from doing and publishing science?
TL;DR: We believe in freedom and prosperity. The truth is, right now such a thing does not really exist for the majority of people. Through doing science, I am experiencing first hand how modern repression looks like. The last years challenged everything I believed in. From science, justice, democracy to peace and freedom. I have seen how fragile of these ideas are.
The problem stretches from normal work life to entrepreneurship and publishing, or just pursuing values. Some things I knew before, but only on the surface — 2nd hand knowledge. It is clear that censorship is not happening like it was hundreds of years ago, where people were publicly thrown into prisons etc. In modern times, the principles are the same, but the methods are more subtle.
I want to share some insights with you such that you can avoid time-consuming mistakes and spot predatory behaviour that is harmful to you. Especially, I would like to name a few patterns you can be aware of to distinguish articles and advertisements you see, but also realize if you are stuck in the censorship trap.
After needing to censor an article about how I got censored and what it meant to me to be able to get another position in academia (yes you have to censor yourself to work in academia, but don’t worry about a normal job this difficulty exists there, too) I felt wrong.
I am the enemy, the black sheep, the guy who is doing everything wrong. So, I leaned it. I finally accepted it: You are right. It’s me, I am just too stupid or whatever it was. And I will trust the system. It works for everyone else, right?
And now, solving the problem of claiming my own science and getting acknowledged for it, is still is not successful (after 3 years of constant work, and censoring and compromising).
Indeed, there are cringy scientists who just use every new idea I incorporated during peer review for their own research (and not citing mine, pretending they would be the first people to invent something).
I know the story goes it's all a big coincidence, and we have seen it happen plenty of times in history, right? People “independently discovering” something, and never heard of others doing the same, etc. But in times of the internet, this phenomenon is seemingly very unlikely. In my example, I track downloads of my package.
And if in my niche 35k people download a software, it means that I outgrew my niche 10x because my niche is not bigger than 2k people. That someone has never heard of that package in my niche with all the noise I made in journals and on the internet is very unlikely. But that all of a sudden, some authors change their articles to incorporate ideas I published 2 months ago coincidentally, is almost impossible.
Expropriation of Science
If the expropriation happened to only a handful of people and only very seldomly, it might be true: My case might be an exception. But upon researching the problem with other scientists from my country in my age and checking articles on arXiv that are exceptional, we can slowly deduct a pattern.
Censorship and subsequent expropriation of the content from the original author is nothing that happens rarely. Expropriation and theft of brain work are the norm right now. It means that you can’t trust scientific media any more.
There are many articles around that shall just cover up schemes, propagate products or companies, directly aim at hindering individual scientists by doing negative censorship (censorship that floods the media with a certain opinion to repress another one), or are stolen in the first place.
It does not stop at small scientists. Even Nobel Prize winners are attacked if they speak critically against fashionable agendas like Corona policies.
The institution of science is deeply troubled by corporations, who have a direct impact on the scientific process and try to cover up any opinion that is different from the opinion they want to propagate.
You already see it. All major publishers are from the same country. There is no European publisher I could send my manuscript to at the moment. Alone this fact tells you that something is going wrong.
The ego trap
Most people are stuck in the ego trap. That means there can’t be anyone who has a slight success but themselves. That means if you are around people in an ego trap, they will start to go to extreme measures to make sure you are not successful.
If you are in such an environment, get out of it as fast as possible. Because you can’t achieve anything in the toxic environment any way. For example, the same mechanics as from a classical journal (described in the section Realworld Example), were already present in my university.
That means the default culture in my previous academic setting was already at pre-PhD level one of expropriation. If I go back in journals, it already started at standard homework at bachelor level, seriously.
I never got this behaviour. Even if I don’t have time or don’t like the project of a client, I would still give my best to help them in some way. May it only be to give them some insight I have about a market, or to explain why I can’t be doing their work under the given circumstances.
But you can also frame it this way. The individuals in ego trap around you in your current toxic environment are happy when you leave, and you are happier and successful when you leave. So? Win, win! Just make sure to never stop doing your thing!
There is always someone better than you
It does not matter what you do, there is always someone better than you. This also means for every person in the field, there exists another person that is better than everyone else. This is of course a contradiction. Someone has to be the best.
What happens if you accidentally — how you could even dare? Seriously, I am wondering when this will become an official crime — are number one on some leaderboard? Well, you will just be deleted out of the leaderboard (at least that is what happened to me).
The scheme needs a certain name, be it real or not, on the leaderboard. It is very unlikely that the name is your name because getting on it in meant you most likely resisted the scheme in the first place.
Do not pay attention and do not care to be the best. Placing someone in front of you who can magically achieve anything you were blocked from is just a scheme to fuck you up.
It is just a mind trick to grind you down and give the people who do this to you even more of your work to expropriate. Just do everything without selfish interests. You will become the best in no time. But you might not be acknowledged. The ego of someone else can’t stand if you are not trapped with their ego.
People making up stories about you
If your project is at the point where it can’t be neglected any more, the people will come and try to “proof” that you were unable to do it in the first place. To me, it is a mystery why someone would invest energy in such an endeavour, but it happens.
Occasionally, you are insulted (even publicly) because people see no other way to shut you down any more. My suggestions, just stay true and stick to your process.
You’ll never have time
Suddenly, you and all of your colleagues have numerous appointments and no one ever has any time left to pursue that project. Do not step into that trap and just keep on moving. The longer you keep moving, the more exhausting are the strategies to keep you from doing your thing, and at some point they might even stop.
Self-censorship
You might be asked to censor yourself, but it won’t be worth it. The people asking that from you, just want to cover up the scheme you got into. It is not trustworthy to scheme you in the first place, but covering it up — come on — they would like to continue doing these things.
Censorship is systematic and institutionalized, and it was not a coincidence it happened to you. If it was, there would be no problem that you are telling your story to improve the system. The improvement you see is, however, not an improvement to the censor.
So it is not worth to self-censor. It is the correct way to teach others about the mechanics of the difficulty and the problem of censorship itself, so they can handle censorship better than you and are not set back years in their life.
You are not acknowledged
As the censors demonstrated their power in front of the world, everyone is now afraid they could be censored in the same way. So they won’t acknowledge you. After all, they can be lucky the censorship is not hitting them, right?
You then are the only person left who can acknowledge yourself. And you should not refrain to do it. It is neither useful to you nor society if you are kept away from getting acknowledged and pursuing your research or business. You are kept from it because of selfish interests from others.
So it is your duty, even if it feels unnecessary (to me, it does feel like s*** having to write these blog posts), to promote and acknowledge yourself, and share the knowledge under your name to help others.
People pretending you are not there
You never get a reply to your emails, can’t land a job, you are slowly pushed out of your circle by this new guy entering it? It can be the problem of censorship is widening into your private life.
Do not keep it for yourself. Speak up for yourself and demand the attention you deserve to stay socially engaged. It is a thin line, but if you have pure intentions it is not about being egoistic. On the contrary, by demanding your spot, you effectively make sure you can improve your field.
Censorship is a social / political construct to exclude you from the social system even though you are a valuable part of the whole and act accordingly. More so, it may even be used to expropriate your work and even your rewards for it.
You are attacked because you violated the selfish interests of someone else. So you are not truly a problem to the social whole, the censor just wants you to appear like it.
People around you behave weird
There is an elephant in the room. Like you got rejected for a PhD position with your exposé, and the professor never replies to you?
Please check in a couple of months later if there is a publication or even a talk about the research you suggested. And make sure you show up at all cost!
If the calendar game (like hundreds of collisions, or no one has time at the same spot) hits your surroundings, make sure people know that this a strategy from censors. You can find strategies to circumvent calendar game if it's clear that it is happening.
Your university just sends you a certificate that does not even display the marks you achieved in the courses? Maybe the certificate is worse than your achievements in the curriculum? They may be acting “really professionally” and want to score you off.
Make sure you get a judge behind it to make sure the certificate is still valid. The idea is that the university can’t lose (here in Germany if it’s part of the censorship institution), so your certificate is valid at least. Plus you can talk about it freely now as there was no need for NDA.
That method is proven as I applied it successfully. Just imagine if you did your PhD and then someone says you did not have a valid degree. Ouch, that sounds like something you would rather not get into. Or even worse, you would have to pay back salary because you lied about your qualifications. Just get rid of that risk.
You want to share your story with someone, but instead of a constructive advice or an open ear, you get threatened and attacked — even by your therapist? If this or the above things in the paragraph happened, they are clear signs that someone is trying to censor you. It also shows you how fragile the system is. So keep moving. The people think it will go one for decades. Most people I know have doubts, tbh.
Real-world example
I documented my case in depth. If you are interested in how does it look like when a publisher is censoring an article, make sure to check it out:
www.codeberg.org/sail.black/carate
What about Business?
Everyone can open a business. So far, so good. But only 1 in 10 are businesses are successful. Even worse with startups.
Startupping is nothing like normal business. Startupping is a standard career path. Just that there is much less regulation for the employee, excuse me, founder.
Most of you know how VCs and raising work, so you tell me where is the difference to the academic system. How is it more fair? To me, the mechanics in publishing/academia and the startup world/VC appear exactly the same.
Everything you learn from the described experiences in academia you can immediately apply to the VC world. After all, it might have been good for something to go to school, right? You can at least distinguish exploitative tactics. That’s good for you.
What can you do?
Practice ownership. It is the extreme opposite of expropriation, and you can help others. Helping yourself and others improves the situation for everyone. It is obvious.
You can found a journal in your country. You can open a non-censored preprint server. In your next lessons, you can bring a couple of examples to your students to show them what to avoid. There are plenty of options.
Becoming part of the institution of censorship won’t help, however. And it’s easy to just close your eyes and pretend nothing happens. So easy. Some are even proud of their achievements in censorship. So why bother with it, it appears to be so easy.
But the problem will become so severe that the whole institution of science will get into a crisis it can no longer evade. And without free thinkers, the issue will widen itself very fast to the rest of society.
Publishing is a profit game (but not for you)
Scientific publishing is a big business. Profit margins are high and it is ridiculous. No one should ever pay to contribute to science or the public knowledge. But publication costs are $2000–$3300 on average for a single article just for submission.
Excuse me, but this is more than a month’s salary for the average PhD student. To publish 70 articles, you will have paid your real estate to a publisher. This system will become obsolete and outdated very soon.
Federation might eliminate the difficulty altogether.
Under this view, all the weird behaviour and rules make more sense, even. The entire reputation game appears to be directed towards this money making machinery.
We need to break free! We need to break out. It is not smart to let other countries and commercial publishers dictate the rules for European or even national science. Those systems perpetually betrayed the trust put into them. The current systems create the problems described.
Conclusion
The obvious best way to counter censorship, is to do the exact opposite — radical ownership. I spent three years actively circumventing censorship, and I regularly share insights and technology that can help you to be free of censorship or circumvent it.
It is necessary to see that our society is extremely repressive in the areas of science and business. That repression of individuals is not necessarily the interest of the social construct of our society as a whole but just of some selfish individuals.
I hope that you can continue to pursue your identity and achievements and stay free from censorship.
So long, and thanks for all the fish, support, and your attention. ⛵️ If you find it useful, please clap-clap and follow me 💪
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Useful Resources
https://authorservices.wiley.com/asset/Wiley-Journal-APCs-Open-Access.xlsx
