A bunch of PhDs are trying to clarify that this study is somehow biologically impossible or anthropologically illiterate.

The amount of trouble academics go through to shield people from what they deem to be dangerous ideas about the world seems kind of atavistic these days, no? https://twitter.com/JAMA_current/status/1304102350857154567

The old knowledge model, in both the European monastic system and the madrasah system was predicated on the idea that knowledge about the world was too complex for common people and therefore dangerous. Besides, people have much better things to do than think about things.

We only kind of sort of abandoned that model with the 17th and 18th century Library Revolution, but the concept of experts obviously remained and was fortified later with the formal university system. A lot of the formalization of that later came about was certainly due to class.

But all of this is completely besides the point, which is that for whatever amount of destroying that Science does to its gatekeeping practices and whatever amount of restructuring is done to what was formerly known as The Republic of Science...

...it will be proportionally more difficult to keep whatever common interpretations Science "wants" people to hold held. After a certain point, the tiger is out and people can no longer be protected from their own conclusions, despite whatever amount of sci-comming people do.

In short:

Open Access will absolutely make creating common knowledge more difficult, and whatever expertise people use to try to step in the way of the trend is futile because they've advocated for a system that bucks their exclusive right to dictate statements about the world.

It's noble to try, but having a PhD means nothing on Twitter. In fact, it hardly means anything on a pre-print website. This is the inevitable, unintended, and ironic conclusion of many of Science's goals in the last decade or so.