3.7K
Downloads
41
Episodes
From the authors of the forthcoming book ”How the Internet Disrupted Science” comes this view of science from where the action is — the scientific claims and publishing space. Hosted by Kent Anderson and Joy Moore, listeners receive analyses of current events, updates about the book, and opinions on various topics of interest. Book pre-sales available now. https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/How-the-Internet-Disrupted-Science/Kent-Anderson/9781493094400
Episodes
Wednesday Jan 07, 2026
Wednesday Jan 07, 2026
Rick Anderson, the University Librarian at Brigham Young University (BYU), joins us today. Rick serves on numerous editorial and advisory boards and is a regular contributor to the Scholarly Kitchen. He has served as president of NASIG and SSP, groups that span from libraries to publishers
- Also, he and Kent are not related, even if people often misattribute things between them.
Late last year, Rick wrote a two-part contemplation (Part 1 and Part 2) of what the OA movement might have achieved and where things might reasonably go from here, emphasizing that a range of approaches might have to be embraced so we can focus on more central issues.
Rick has also written three books, including Scholarly Communication: What Everyone Needs to Know (Oxford University Press, 2018).
Our wide-ranging discussion touches on how libraries first inspired Rick, his career journey from BYU and back, and his role in shaping discussions around OA through analysis.
We finish with “Discoveries of the Week.”
- Joy’s Discovery of the Week: https://youtu.be/zOd01sLlDj4?si=L6cCE09o-K7c-g1A
Subscribe to our podcast
- Subscribe on Apple Podcasts
- Subscribe on Spotify
- Subscribe on Amazon Music/Audible
- Subscribe on YouTube
Music provided by Provoke the Truth — https://provokethetruth.net/
Wednesday Dec 31, 2025
Wednesday Dec 31, 2025
To close out 2025, we’ve decided to focus on a few related topics — incentives, norms, rules, and the customer you choose. Scientific and scholarly publishing has embraced misaligned incentives by making information producers the primary customers, causing the norms and rules of the game to warp and even break.
- What might happen if we reorient ourselves around information consumers?
- What norms might be more readily embraced?
- What rules might be reestablished?
- Would it be a better game?
A recent proposal in Nature from Jennifer Byrne, a cancer researcher at the University of Sydney, would require publishers to certify as ISO-9001 organizations, with her justifications fitting with our arguments quite well:
- “Organizations certified as ISO-9001-compliant must demonstrate operations that are customer-focused, committed to continual improvement and underpinned by systematic management approaches and evidence-based decision-making.”
- “Journals and publishers are currently incentivized to meet authors’ expectations — but ISO 9001 compliance means also prioritizing the needs of readers.”
Other links for the episode:
- Cloud Dancer Dogs: https://www.latimes.com/companion-animals/dogs/breeds/story/pantone-2026-cloud-dancer-white-dog-breeds
- “HardFork” interview: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/26/podcasts/hardfork-ai-science.html
- Tristan Harris interview: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-ai-dilemma-with-tristan-harris/id1498802610?i=1000740817066
This also marks our 32nd episode since launching the “Disrupted Science” podcast in June — a surprising achievement as according to Riverside 44% of podcasts started don’t make it past three episodes, and only 8% make it past 10 episodes.
Maybe we’re just stubborn enough to make this work. We were stubborn enough to write a book, after all.
- We were also interviewed last week by Darrell Gunter for WSOU 98.5FM at Seton Hall.
-
- Maybe we also like to talk . . .
We’ve had tremendous guests as we’ve gotten underway, and look forward to some of them returning next year in addition to some great new guests already being lined up.
We also have our final “Discoveries of the Week” and some book updates to share.
Thanks for listening, and for all your support.
Happy New Year!
Subscribe to our podcast
- Subscribe on Apple Podcasts
- Subscribe on Spotify
- Subscribe on Amazon Music/Audible
- Subscribe on YouTube
Music provided by Provoke the Truth — https://provokethetruth.net/
Wednesday Dec 17, 2025
Wednesday Dec 17, 2025
For a variety of reasons we explore in the podcast, the OA bubble is not arriving in the AI era as something as all-encompassing or healthy as imagined — in fact, it appears to be deflating and is certainly dirtier than expected. It also does not possess sufficient surface tension to repel elements of the AI bubble from mixing in — OA papers with OA citations and text are often found, and many more are suspected to exist throughout preprint servers, predatory publishers, and opportunistic Gold OA publishers.
The increasingly conjoined bubbles may share a fate in some manner, one we speculate about.
There are also some common business aspects — funding that dries up, circular financing operations, and bad actors aplenty.
Will both bubbles pop in spectacular fashion? Will they slowly deflate? Will one pop, leaving the other unharmed? Or are there another scenarios?
In any event, both bubbles appear incongruous with scientific discovery.
Where do we go from here?
We finish with our “Discoveries of the Week.”
- Article on the New York Times’ “Connections” game.
Subscribe to our podcast
- Subscribe on Apple Podcasts
- Subscribe on Spotify
- Subscribe on Amazon Music/Audible
- Subscribe on YouTube
Music provided by Provoke the Truth — https://provokethetruth.net/
Wednesday Dec 10, 2025
Wednesday Dec 10, 2025
Today, we’re talking with Elizabeth Jacobs, Professor Emerita in the Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics at the University of Arizona. She retired in 2024 to help found “Defend Public Health,” a fiscally-sponsored volunteer network of public health researchers, healthcare workers, advocates and allies fighting to protect public health from the Trump administration’s attacks on proven, science-based policies.
Topics of today’s interview include RFK, Jr., MAHA, public health disinformation and misinformation, supplements grifting, seeds of chaos to enable lawsuits, the importance of a new approach to advocacy, the negative valence of social media, and the proven power and safety of vaccines.
Also, we have our “Discoveries of the Week,” including an important study Jacobs mentions.
Subscribe to our podcast
- Subscribe on Apple Podcasts
- Subscribe on Spotify
- Subscribe on Amazon Music/Audible
- Subscribe on YouTube
Music provided by Provoke the Truth — https://provokethetruth.net/
Wednesday Dec 03, 2025
Wednesday Dec 03, 2025
This week, we dive into an unexpected topic — the rather bizarre Bluesky account run by Altmetric.
Altmetric has made some changes lately, including podcasts, so-called sentiment analysis, and Bluesky itself. And their LinkedIn account is much more sober than Bluesky.
But as you experience the Bluesky account, you get a feeling that something is definitely not quite right.
What is going on here? Is some part of Altmetric coming off the rails?
And, with the Impact Factor producing confusing results, is it time to look beyond current metrics?
We also have some book updates and our “Discoveries of the Week.”
Subscribe to our podcast
- Subscribe on Apple Podcasts
- Subscribe on Spotify
- Subscribe on Amazon Music/Audible
- Subscribe on YouTube
Music provided by Provoke the Truth — https://provokethetruth.net/
Wednesday Nov 26, 2025
Wednesday Nov 26, 2025
Derek Lowe is a medicinal chemist working on drug discovery. He’s been writing a renowned science blog called “In the Pipeline” since 2002.
Lowe tackles a mix of scientific updates, political perspectives, and critiques of scientific publishing, all in an extremely down-to-earth and readable manner. He’s also the author of a 2016 book, The Chemistry Book: From Gunpowder to Graphene, 250 Milestones in the History of Chemistry.
In a recent post Lowe described himself as an “AI Realist,” while writing a great line about current LLMs:
They are extruding an optimized slurry of words into answer-shaped chunks. To my way of thinking, these are far more removed from actual human writing than a typical chicken nugget is from a chicken walking around a barnyard — but I have to admit that there are many situations where they’re good enough.
When it comes to AI, Lowe is a short-term pessimist and a long-term optimist, but as the interview shows, sacrificing science at the altar of technology is not a way forward.
Discovery science, the effects of cuts on academia, and why drug discovery is and likely will remain difficult terrain are all topics we discuss.
A serious amateur astronomer and — like any good chemist — a cook, Derek’s renowned chocolate pecan pie recipe: https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/holiday-organic-synthesis-chocolate-pecan-pie
It’s an entertaining and informative episode, with our “Discoveries of the Week” and our thanks for all the support you’ve given us and our nascent podcast efforts so far.
Subscribe to our podcast
- Subscribe on Apple Podcasts
- Subscribe on Spotify
- Subscribe on Amazon Music/Audible
- Subscribe on YouTube
Music provided by Provoke the Truth — https://provokethetruth.net/
Wednesday Nov 19, 2025
Wednesday Nov 19, 2025
Today, we’re talking with Roger McNamee, an entrepreneur, author, musician, and investor with a legacy in Silicon Valley that stretches from his days heading the T. Rowe Price Science and Technology Fund through the social media era and now into the crypto and AI era.
In 2019, McNamee published a book — Zucked: Waking Up to the Facebook Catastrophe — where he outlined how his high hopes for his proteges Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg had been dashed.
More recently, he’s been reflecting on the mismatches between capital investments and revenues for large AI companies.
McNamee is a member of the band Moonalice, which performs and records regularly. He shares a fascinating story about the band, as well.
We finish with our “Discoveries of the Week.”
Subscribe to our podcast
- Subscribe on Apple Podcasts
- Subscribe on Spotify
- Subscribe on Amazon Music/Audible
- Subscribe on YouTube
Music provided by Provoke the Truth — https://provokethetruth.net/
Wednesday Nov 12, 2025
Wednesday Nov 12, 2025
Today, we’re talking with Jeremy Berg, a former editor of Science, former President of ASBMB, and former Director of the National Institute of General Medical Sciences (NIGMS) at the NIH.
Earlier this year, Berg grew alarmed at the nomination of Jay Bhattacharya as Director of the NIH, and began a correspondence with him after his confirmation. For a time, he documented this via his Bluesky account, which grew massively as a result.
Striking a calm, evidence-based tone, Berg often received no response from Bhattacharya. When he did, the responses seemed to bristle with political overtones. Berg published these correspondences in late Summer in PDF form under the title, “Fifty Shades of Jay.” He continues to update the document from time to time.
We wanted to talk with Jeremy about this, and given the recent spate of announcements about Director-level “hiring in a hurry” at the NIH — including a new Director of the NLM — we also wanted to discuss other aspects of MAHA-era science defunding, firings, and hirings as the US scientific establishment is turned upside-down. We also talk about diversity issues, with a particularly interesting angle coming to light.
It’s a fascinating interview throughout, which we close with our “Discoveries of the Week.”
Subscribe to our podcast
- Subscribe on Apple Podcasts
- Subscribe on Spotify
- Subscribe on Amazon Music/Audible
- Subscribe on YouTube
Music provided by Provoke the Truth — https://provokethetruth.net/