The DISRUPTED SCIENCE Podcast

October 29, 2025 — Interview with Emily Bender and Alex Hanna, authors of “The AI Con”

Today, we’re talking with Emily Bender and Alex Hanna, co-authors of the book The AI Con, which came out earlier this year. 

Emily is a Professor of Linguistics at the University of Washington where she is also the Faculty Director of the Computational Linguistics Master of Science program in the School of Computer Science and Engineering and the Information School. In 2023, she was included in the inaugural Time 100 list of the most influential people in AI. 

Alex is Director of Research at the Distributed AI Research Institute and a Lecturer in the School of Information at the University of California Berkeley. She is an outspoken critic of the tech industry, a proponent of community-based uses of technology, and a highly sought-after speaker and expert. 

We discuss how AI hoodwinks people by exploiting their natural tendency to assign intelligence to things that produce language, how “science is squarely in the hype danger zone,” labor and structural issues related to AI exploitation and extraction, and so much more.

You can get a sense of their witty approach to tackling this by realizing that when they talk about “synthetic text extruding machines,” it reduces to “STEM.”

We also get their “Discoveries of the Week.”

Visit this page for information about contacting Emily.

Visit this page for information about contacting Alex.

For more information about their book, visit this page.

Our book — available for PRESALE — is here: https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/How-the-Internet-Disrupted-Science/Kent-Anderson/9781493094400

Music provided by Provoke the Truth — https://provokethetruth.net/ 

October 22, 2025 — Interview with Mike Olson About Library Tech

Today, we’re talking with Mike Olson, Assistant Professor and Cataloging & Discovery Librarian at Murphy Library, University of Wisconsin-La Crosse. Mike published two guest posts on “The Scholarly Kitchen” earlier this year which caught our eye.

The first was in March, where he wrote about library catalogs as colonization systems with the power to make naming decisions appear neutral and inevitable by disguising bias behind what a former ALA president called “a facade of technical objectivity.”

His next post in August had to do with layoffs at OCLC justified by claims of advances in AI that could lead to efficiency. Mike noted that “the same technological advances celebrated for their efficiency are erasing the human expertise that creates the high-quality metadata these systems depend on to function.”  

As fans of human expertise, local and disciplinary control, and skepticism about tech claims, we wanted to bring him on for a conversation.

The interview does not disappoint, as it echoes concerns from earlier interviews about how academia is being appropriated for rents and extractive processes by tech companies without support for the kind of skepticism and support of human expertise we’d expect from universities.

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Music provided by Provoke the Truth — https://provokethetruth.net/ 

October 15, 2025 — Interview with Seth Leopold, MD, Editor of "CORR"

Today, we’re joined by Seth Leopold, an orthopaedic surgeon and Editor-in-Chief of Clinical Orthopaedics and Related Research, also known as CORR, a top journal in orthopaedic surgery. 

Seth and Kent got to know one another through some projects and mutual concerns about scientific publishing, and this year they published a piece with another editor in marine science outlining their concerns about unreviewed preprints. Today we talk about some of the challenges the editorial team at CORR wrestles with on a daily basis, some of the stances the orthopaedic journals have taken collectively, and some of the more recent challenges AI has posed for them.

Show Notes

Preprint paper by Leopold, Browman, and Anderson: https://journal.trialanderror.org/pub/preprinting-responsibility/release/1

Paper about CORR wrestling with AI LTEs: https://journals.lww.com/clinorthop/fulltext/2025/10000/editorial__ai_assisted_letters_to_the_editor_scope.1.aspx

Music provided by Provoke the Truth — https://provokethetruth.net/ 

October 8, 2025 — Worship of Tech, Fear of Tylenol

Acetamiophen is one of the most studied analgesics in the world, and was the centerpiece of a famous product recall when a murderer laced capsules with potassium cyanide. The company swept the shelves in the name of public safety, and restocked them only after establishing new tamper-proof packaging.

Today, Big Tech is releasing products that are leading to clear consumer harms, yet remain idolized and immunized. Why is this? Is there a quasi-religious aspect to technology and its offshoots we need to recognize? How does this dovetail with re-emerging religious fundamentalism in general? And where does it leave science?

We discuss these topics and share our ”Discoveries of the Week.”

Music provided by Provoke the Truth — https://provokethetruth.net/ 

 

September 26, 2025 — Interview with Christine Laine, MD, Editor-in-Chief of the "Annals of Internal Medicine"

This week, in a special Friday episode, we are pleased to bring you an interview with Christine Laine, the Editor-in-Chief of Annals of Internal Medicine, which is published by the American College of Physicians (ACP).

The Annals and the ACP have been at the center of a couple of controversies stirred up by the MAHA crowd. You’ll hear how word reached the Annals team that RFK, Jr., wanted a paper about vaccines and autism retracted. (Hint: RFK, Jr., looks bad, the Annals comes out smelling like a rose.) And you’ll hear more about that BMC Environmental Health paper, and why its methodology is suspect, how its author still involved in the legal case where his evidence was disallowed by a judge, and more.

We also discuss the use of AI in medical science, point-of-care systems, and physician training and practice — including how it’s affecting patient interactions.

At its heart, it is an interview about the power of expertise, the importance of good journals within scientific communities, the role of editorial care and collaborations, and how we collectively get science done right. Unlike what some would have you believe, it’s not easy.

We hope you enjoy the interview.

 

Show Notes

Dr. Andrea Love’s coverage of the Tylenol paper’s disreputable background: https://news.immunologic.org/p/the-tylenolautism-pseudoscience-pipeline

The paper in question: https://ehjournal.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12940-025-01208-0 

Music provided by Provoke the Truth — https://provokethetruth.net/ 

 

September 24, 2025 — “Predatory Data” — Interview with Anita Chan

The author of the book, Predatory Data: Eugenics in Big Tech and Our Fight for an Independent Future, Anita Chan is a Professor in the School of Information Sciences and Department of Media and Cinema Studies at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. Today, she joins us to discuss the relationships between Big Data, eugenics, Big Tech, techno-fascism, AI in science, and more. It's an enlightening conversation, and an especially urgent one given how hard Big Tech is attempting to co-opt our culture.

We also share our “Discoveries of the Week,” including a rediscovery of a classic technique for teaching. (Hint: It still works.)

 

Show Notes

Predatory Data book: https://www.ucpress.edu/books/predatory-data/paper?ref=the-geyser.com

Interview with Olivia Guest and Iris van Rooij: https://www.podbean.com/ew/pb-6amys-196264a

Music provided by Provoke the Truth — https://provokethetruth.net/ 

Platypus Pups video: https://youtu.be/ZEl5RJiiLbk

“Disrupted Science” t-shirt: https://crowdmade.com/collections/petty-larceny-merch/products/petty-larceny-disrupted-science-t-shirt-black

 

September 17, 2025 — Are We Breaking Peer Review?

It's Peer Review Week — but what does that mean anymore? We examine the focus on AI in this year's event, dissect how the definition of "peer review" has shifted from audience-focused selection and refinement to author-focused speed and scale as science has been platformed and adopted a tech-influenced mindset.

 

Show Notes [Due to a technical problem, this week is audio-only]

Peer Review Week: https://peerreviewweek.net/

Silverchair AI thoughts: https://www.silverchair.com/news/the-coming-inflection-point/

Elsevier announcement: https://www.elsevier.com/about/press-releases/redefining-research-elsevier-announces-next-generation-ai-powered-researcher-solution

Cactus Communications announcement: https://cactusglobal.com/media-center/paperpal-ai-that-brings-out-the-best-in-you/

Interview with Olivia Guest and Iris van Rooij: https://www.podbean.com/ew/pb-6amys-196264a

Music provided by Provoke the Truth — https://provokethetruth.net/ 

September 12, 2025 — Safeguarding Science from AI: An Interview with Olivia Guest and Iris van Rooij

In this special episode, we speak with two authors of the position paper, "Against the Uncritical Adoption of 'AI' Technologies in Academia," Olivia Guest and Iris van Rooij, and discuss how academics and scientists need to probe the claims of so-called AI systems, their compatibility with scientific and academic endeavors, and the personal responsibilities academics, researchers, and teachers retain despite these new toys.

 

Show Notes

"AI Slop and the Destruction of Knowledge": https://irisvanrooijcogsci.com/2025/08/12/ai-slop-and-the-destruction-of-knowledge/

"Against the Uncritical Adoption of 'AI' Technologies in Academia": https://zenodo.org/records/17065099

Music provided by Provoke the Truth — https://provokethetruth.net/