how do you deal with retractions? how do you deal with academic/research conduct so egregious that all previous versions of a retracted paper need to be edited with “RETRACTED” in big red letters over all the text on every page of the paper? just to make sure no-one ever accidentally reads one page and thinks it is a legitimate source of information.

like the one written by disgraced ex-doctor andrew wakefield: https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6...

immutability doesn’t stop academic misconduct. in this specific egregious example it would enable serious harm to continue until every peer updates to the new versions. and there is no guarantee that happens.

the lancet, with their mutable web server hosted versions, were able to edit it and stick RETRACTED in big red letters all over the thing immediately [0]. the ability to edit due to misconduct is guaranteed.

like, i’m all for anything that stops OpenAI spamming web servers, or more generally anything that gets in their way. but there isn’t a perfect technical solution. torrents don’t solve the problem perfectly, they bring new trade offs.

that’s what i’m trying to help you see here. it’s mostly shades of grey.

[0]: by immediate, i mean “once they finally made the decision to retract it waaaaaaaaaay later than they should have”. like, the update was immediate. not the paper was immediately retracted on publication.