Saying that the work could not have been done without it is basically admitting that you got papers outside the subscriptions of your institution. It is also against the policy of all the institutions I know, so could be grounds for termination. And again, this could apply to your co-authors as well.
I am really not endorsing the subscription model, but putting something like that in your articles' acknowledgments really is not smart.
Isn’t that exactly the point? How is it not hindering scientific progress if you do not have access to research that you don’t pay for.
It’s not like the journals themselves fund the research, they’re just getting a free ride.
The situation is worse as most of the research is already paid for by tax money.
Not really. It could also mean: Scihub offers an efficient way to explore scientific articles, and without it, I (the scientist) wouldn't have bothered with all the different paywalls to even check if papers were worth reading. And as such, I would not have reached the same results.
I will allow that there may be some harms which can result from unlimited copying of anything you want— but they bear no resemblance to the collision of automobiles in the midst of a busy intersection.
But physical space is inherently rivalrous, and a policy of "everyone runs a red light if they think they can get away with it" is going to have people being disastrously wrong sometimes.
I've actually ridden a scooter in places in SE Asia which basically work this way and it's... different. Less insane than it sounds, or looks like, but the rates of traffic fatality are objectively much higher.
This is why I thought it was interesting enough to comment upon.
"Running a red light" does not just mean "go when it's red" but it explicitly means "transgressing a stop signal". That there can be stop signals on multiple entrances also is complicating and sets up the crash.
