2085

This is exceptionally lazy art, even by Randall's standards-- how long do you think this comic took to put together, from start to finish? And what is the joke? arXiv hosts preprints: versions of manuscripts that have not yet been peer-reviewed, and usually go on to be published in those horrible scientific journals. Is it that the existence of preprints is essentially in conflict with the existence of the journals and conference proceedings they end up in? That Cornell University, whose endowment was valued at 5.8 billion dollars in 2016, is really making huge sacrifices to host arXiv? The alt text ("scientists are better people than non-scientists") makes it even worse: why is Randall so smug about something to which he has never contributed and with which he has not even meaningfully interacted since the Bush administration?