 What's the best way to stay healthy in the face of so much conflicting nutrition information? Well, ideally, you would go to the source, the gold standard the peer-reviewed medical literature and read through the stacks of the latest medical journals. But who's got time for that? I do! Welcome to the Nutrition Facts Podcast. I'm your host, Dr. Michael Greger. Did you know that medical journals can cost tens of thousands per year for a subscription and even access to a single online article can cost dozens of dollars? But the founder of the website Sci Hub, a woman known as the Robin Hood of Science, set out to change that. Here's her story. The first issues of the first scientific journals were published back in 1665, in which it was noted things like, hey, it looks like there's a spot on Jupiter, thanks to new telescopes invented by a certain Mr. Newton, whose friend Hallie described a comet. The same journal that reported that oranges and lemons could cure scurvy, and something in willow tree bark could bring down a fever. Also published a letter by some guy over in the colonies about playing with kites during lightning storms, and the count of a remarkable eight-year-old musician by the name of Amadeus. And within this last century, some sketchings of the structure of some molecule called DNA, a journal still in publication to this day 350 years later, available now online and in print for the low-low subscription price of only $6,666 a year. As you can imagine, the high price of journals leaves doctors in developing countries missing out on relevant information about health. At that time, back in the 90s, there was optimism that by 2004 at least, the problem of access to life-saving scientific information would be solved. But 2004 came and went, setting their sights for 2015. Surely by then we can achieve health information for all, as lack of access remained a major barrier. Realistically, only scientists at really big, well-funded universities in the developed world may have full access to published research. And as prices rise even higher, even that may no longer be true. You know there's a problem when even Harvard, as in $30 billion endowment Harvard, claims that costs for research journals are now prohibitive. Meanwhile, the journal publishers are raking in billions charging institutions up to $35,000 a year per journal and charging individuals online per article. So you have a family member diagnosed with some disease and you go online. You can read all sorts of internet direct, but if you want to see the actual science, it can get expensive. And you likely paid for the research, tax dollars pour in to fund the research, and then you can't get access to the research you paid for. It's like if a nice little city park was built, but then some private firm came in and started to charge admission. That's roughly how it works with scientific research. And this conversion of public research dollars into private publishing profits has long been a source of discontent. The publishers don't end up paying anything for the research. They get it for free. They don't pay the researchers anything. So we pay for it and then we have to pay for it again if we want to read it. So it can end up with science as a profit system rather than science as knowledge. Alexander Elbakan, nicknamed by some the Robin Hood of Science. It's the story of how one researcher made nearly every scientific paper ever published available for free to everyone, anywhere in the world. Named by perhaps the most prestigious scientific journal in the world as one of the top 10 people who mattered the most in science in 2016, Alexandra started out as just a frustrated grad student in Kazakhstan, unable to access the scholarly papers she needed for her research. Once she figured out how to circumvent all the paywalls, she started a website, now at Psy-Hub.io to remove all barriers in the way of science, by giving away the world's scientific, medical, and nutrition literature for free. What she did is nothing short of awesome, said one researcher. Lack of access to scientific literature is a massive injustice, and she fixed it with one fell swoop. Alexandra Elbakan, a 20-something-year-old grad student, is operating a free, searchable online database of nearly 50 million stolen scholarly journal articles, shattering the $10 billion per year paywall of academic publishers in awe-inspiring act of altruism, or a massive criminal enterprise, depending on who you ask. Now up to 60 million papers, providing access to nearly all scholarly literature, via its websites Psy-Hub.cc, Psy-Hub.io, and Psy-Hub.ac. Psy-Hub was able to fill 99.3% of article requests all for free. A sister site, a library genesis at libgen.io, distributes scientific books and textbooks for free, more than a million of them, also illegally. Who's downloading pirated papers? Everyone concluded this feature in prestigious journal Science. A survey of potential users suggests for most it's not some grand political statement, but rather that's the only way they have access, or feel it's just so much quicker and easier. Even those who have legitimate institutional access may still choose to use Psy-Hub, because there's just so many fewer hoops to jump through. So you can imagine how sites like Psy-Hub may be filling publishers that charge for access with roaring existential panic, and they're not taking it lying down. Elsevier, the largest publisher, notorious for demanding researchers take down free copies of their own work, sued Psy-Hub, the library genesis project Alexandra and 99 John Doe's for copyright infringement, a willful disregard of Elsevier's rights. Kind of hard to take the moral high ground, though, when you're effectively an international arms dealer. Can you imagine a tobacco company publishing health journals? Surely the company's business mission would be impossibly confused. Would the company be in the business of killing people or keeping them alive? But if you can't imagine that absurdity, well, welcome to Elsevier, which in addition to publishing medical journals is also involved in the global arms trade, running arms fairs, where things like cluster bombs are sold, leading to medical journal editorial boards calling for a boycott of Elsevier's warmongreen health damaging business practices. In response to the lawsuit, Alexandra wrote a letter to the judge. She wanted to make it clear that not only did Elsevier not create those papers, but that they don't pay researchers a penny. So it's not like a pirated movie or song where the content creator is losing out, noting that no researcher had ever complained that she was handing out their research. In fact, scientific authors are typically thrilled when their work gets more out into the world. That's the whole point of science, to be shared and built upon. And one fell swoop. Alexandra created a portal, likely offering a greater level of access to science than any institution on earth in history, literally opening up a world of knowledge. And she's not backing down. Citing in her defense Article 27 of the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights that everyone should have the right to freely participate in the cultural life of a community, including sharing in scientific advancement and its benefits. She realizes she could be arrested and extradited to the U.S. to face charges. She's fully aware that another computer prodigy-turned-advocate, Aaron Schwartz, was arrested on similar charges after mass downloading academic papers. Facing devastating financial penalties in jail time, Schwartz hanged himself. Note, since I recorded the narration for that episode, scihub.io was shut down, but the site can currently be reached at scihub.st. And also can be reached at five other domains should that one get yanked to, you can always see the updated active link list on the scihub Wikipedia page. We would love it if you could share with us your stories about reinventing your health through evidence-based nutrition. Go to nutritionfacts.org slash testimonials. We may be able to share it on our social media to help inspire others. To see any graphs, charts, graphics, images, or studies mentioned here, please go to the Nutrition Facts podcast landing page. There you'll find all the detailed information you need, plus links to all the sources we cite for each of these topics. For a vital, timely text on the pathogens that cause pandemics, you can order the e-book, audio book, or hard copy of my latest book, How to Survive a Pandemic. For recipes, check out my new How Not to Diet cookbook. It's beautifully designed with more than 100 recipes for delicious and nutritious meals. And of course, all of the proceeds I receive from sales of all my books go to charity. NutritionFacts.org is a non-profit, science-based public service where you can sign up for free daily updates. In the latest in nutrition research via bite-sized videos and articles, everything on the website is free. There's no ads, no corporate sponsorship, no kickbacks. It's strictly non-commercial, not selling anything. I just put it up as a public service as a labor of love, as a tribute to my grandmother, whose own life was saved with evidence-based nutrition.