The media-academia complex — Adam Smith Institute

"The last decade or so has seen academia become increasingly open to scrutiny and criticism, and that’s a good thing. Open access journals and the use of ‘working papers’ to get round publishing restrictions in gated journals allow people from outside academia to use and challenge existing research. The more freely-available work like this is, the better.

But much of the media hasn’t caught up. It’s common to cover research papers from think tanks, consultancy firms and academics that haven’t been made publicly available...At least a dozen times in the past twelve months alone the ASI has been asked to comment on some new study that hasn’t been made available yet – as if we can criticise something without seeing it first.

The practice of reporting on research that is not open to scrutiny by others has to stop. At best it holds back the progress the world is making towards more open access to academic research. At worst it leads to bad research being reported without being challenged properly, and people who trust the news they read being misled."