A recent episode of Paris Marx’s “Tech Won’t Save Us” podcast featured Tim Schwab, author of the 2023 book, The Bill Gates Problem: Reckoning with the Myth of the Good Billionaire. Recent revelations about Gates and Jeffrey Epstein have led to a reckoning at the Gates Foundation, making Schwab’s book more relevant and causing us to pause and revisit the role of the Gates Foundation and funders in general in the scientific and scholarly publishing space.

Started to reputation-wash himself after Microsoft lost its 2001 anti-trust case — with Gates himself testifying in a memorable set of exchanges — the Gates Foundation’s reputation has been eroding for some time. The Epstein Files may be the end of the line for this effort to rehabilitate Gates’ reputation.

As we write in our upcoming book, Gates is not alone in trying to use money to influence priorities in science, medicine, and scientific publishing:

They are all proving problematic.

We discuss Phase 1 of funder involvement, and how this has created a bridge into a more dire potential Phase 2 as MAHA grifters have learned the tricks of sheltering cash and spending on grifter science.

We also share our Discoveries of the Week.

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

John Wiley & Sons is at it again with its “date anyone with a cute AI” approach, announcing yesterday a deal with OpenEvidence (OE). This is nothing new for Wiley, a company that seems more infatuated with tech than it is with science and scholarship, a massive departure from its roots.

OE is certainly happy to make the deal, but not for the quality of the content. Rather, it keeps their targeted ad business growing. Platforming medical and health content is simply laying the groundwork for making a Facebook of medical information — a platform designed to sell user-targeted ads with the quality of content barely registering as a concern.

OE has proven susceptible to eugenics-adjacent pay-to-play misinformation, pay-to-play articles placed to help shill colostrum, and pay-to-play articles published to promote “functional medicine,” a MAHA-related pseudo-specialty. And nobody at OE seems to care, because that’s just part of the Section 230 platform game — don’t interfere in the content, just use it to get qualified leads to interact with your ad system.

While Facebook leveraged the trust of your social network — friends, family, neighbors, acquaintances — to get users into their ad platform, OE is leveraging trust markers in medical science, from brands to the concepts of peer review and evidence.

Bottom line? OE is an advertising platform being rolled out to target physicians with premium targeted ads, likely selling for a cost-per-view (CPV) of $500-$800. With major agencies backing it and others suffering FOMO, OE is positioned to clean up. However, with only about $7 billion in annual pharma ad spending, is this enough to justify their massive valuation? And will they be able to unseat actual point-of-care tools like UpToDate? Or will they just be a second-rate sideshow after the dust settles, the fundamental flaws become clear, and the short-term wins have been pocketed?

We also share our “Discoveries of the Week.”

Fish doorbells: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-the-dutch-fish-doorbell-helps-migrating-fish-each-spring/

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

The last 25 years in scientific publishing has been about privileging technology-backed insurgents — business models, philosophies, belief systems, information theories. Natural science empowered by digital tools flipped to “digital science” at the expense of funding for natural science.

Things are more complicated now in the sciences. Insurgents are coming from all directions, so we have to distinguish between bad insurgents and good insurgents — and some of the new bad ones are playing an updated version of the tech game, too.

Good insurgents want to align with pro-science players for the long-term and to the benefit of all. Bad insurgents continue to exploit communication channels and others, primarily for their own enrichment and benefit.

In addition, bewildering controversies have emerged between the science-aligned incumbents and science-aligned insurgents, in particular AAAS and Stand Up for Science.

We discuss the value of the newer, unencumbered insurgents vs. encumbered incumbents, how the battle is against anti-science players unencumbered by rules, norms, or bureaucratic process, and how we need to support the good insurgents who are focused beyond the horizon of crazy in-fighting.

The incumbents have the power to influence, and they have a choice to make.

We also share our “Discoveries of the Week.”

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

Carl Rhodes is Professor of Business and Society at The University of Technology Sydney Business School. Carl researches the relationship between liberal democracy and contemporary capitalism.

Martina Linnenluecke is an internationally recognized scholar who conducts research on corporate adaptation and resilience to global climate change. She is also at The University of Technology Sydney Business School.

Their work caught our attention when we saw their January 5, 2026, article in The Conversation entitled “The 5 stages of the ‘enshittification’ of academic publishing.” It was related to their 2025 “speaking out” article in the journal Organization entitled “The junkification of research.”

From academic capitalism to the secondary market for careerist OA publishing, the discussion is wide-ranging and lively, with a focus on their five stages of junkification/enshittification:

We also share our “Discoveries of the Week.”

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

Maxwell K. Riggsbee, Jr., is a technologist currently specializing in developing machine learning systems around content serving US government policy-makers and related stakeholders via his company Gadget Software. 

Max is also well-known for the cartoons he puts out on LinkedIn. Inspired by his love of 19th century political cartoons, these are timely, well-designed encapsulations of current events. One he did in honor of my post about “Rachel So” and aixiv.org was particularly lovely. 

We wanted to talk to Maxwell about his career, his cartoons, and his vision for where this is all going.

We also discuss his idea for “compute-ready documents,” and share our “Discoveries of the Week.”

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

Earlier this week, Ben Collins, the owner of The Onion, was interviewed on Kara Swisher’s “On” podcast. The interview raised some core questions about the digital information age and how we in scientific publishing are handling it so far.

Collins is from Massachusetts. His mother is a librarian, and he initially pursued a sports journalism career. In 2024, he became CEO of a company called Global Tetrahedron, which purchased The Onion. He wanted to rescue it from being purchased by Elon Musk and becoming “an AI slop farm.”

The interview touched on a core difference in the media space, one that I pondered independently before listening to the interview — Why is there one fake media space that is currently thriving but starting to crack under the strain, and a separate reality-based media space growing stronger and more interesting and relevant by the day?

What does this portend? Where does scientific publishing fit into this now? Are we indulging unscientific fantasies of our own?

And why is it so much more fun and impactful to be in the reality-based world today?

We also share our “Discoveries of the Week.”

Interview with Ben Collins: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-onions-ben-collins-on-political-satire-why-trump/id1643307527?i=1000747679219

Wired article about infiltrating Moltbook: https://www.wired.com/story/i-infiltrated-moltbook-ai-only-social-network/

“Polymaths” fantasies: https://www.forbes.com/sites/joemckendrick/2025/01/20/in-the-age-of-artificial-intelligence-polymaths-are-back-in-vogue/

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

PJ Puterbaugh’s skills exist at the intersection of art and science.

Working as a painter and portraitist, years ago she found herself utilizing her abilities to help people by becoming a forensic artist. This meant certifying with the International Association for Identification (IAI) and becoming a Certified Forensic Artist.

PJ works by assisting various law enforcement agencies with John and Jane Doe images and skull-to-face reconstructions. The same methods can also apply to museum and historical projects. Her work for medical examiners and cold case investigators bridges forensic science, creative visualization, and multimedia storytelling to bring human faces to life with accuracy and impact. She has helped law enforcement identify various victims and close years-old cold cases. 

We also have our “Discoveries of the Week,” which are quite toothy.

PJ Puterbaugh’s site: https://pjputerbaughartist.com/

Forensic Art and Illustration: https://www.amazon.com/Forensic-Art-Illustration-Karen-Taylor/dp/0849381185/

GOLF: What You Know Can Hurt You: https://www.amazon.com/GOLF-What-Discover-fundamentals-swing/dp/0615268404/

Ologies podcast about paleohistology: https://www.alieward.com/ologies/paleohistology

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

Reading about Skylar Hughes is like reading about the early days of a superstar. A ballerina, a young academic powerhouse, and a community and psychological researcher for years already, Skylar went from high school in Georgia to attending Duke University, her dream at the time. 

She worked as a fact-checker at CNN, and caught our eye with her TEDxDuke talk about social norms around truth.

Since then, she has graduated from Duke and is now pursuing a Master’s in the Social Science of the Internet at the Oxford Internet Institute. 

In this interview, we discuss distinctions between norms, normal, and normalized, dis- and misinformation, believing lies vs. condoning lies, “weird checking,” the Fairness Doctrine, and much more.

We also have our “Discoveries of the Week.”

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

“Disintermediation” was a hot buzzword during the early days of disruption thinking, but it never really occurred. Instead, the platform era ushered in new forms of intermediation based on advertising incentives and deregulation, making the current environment far less accountable and far more about exploitation.

Markets depend on middlemen, as do information economies. The health of markets and information spaces often depends on how well those middlemen function, the rules that define their scope of action, and the incentives that guide their choices. As Jonathan Rauch wrote in The Constitution of Knowledge: A Defense of the Truth (Brookings Institution Press, 2021):

Compared to the intermediation of yore, with editors, editorial boards, and publishing staff listed on mastheads, platforms have no such obvious pathways to accountability. Section 230 has been used to provide them with the kind of legal cover that allows them to make their own rules and behave with near impunity. Attention is the new commodity, and stealing yours is the goal. The new middleman is a thief, not an ally.

We discuss these issues, the black boxes of platforms, the role of LLMs as new black box intermediaries, the long-forgotten Fairness Doctrine and its relevance, and more.

We also touch on recent news (the new STM report, PISS, and more).

Joy’s post about velvet ropes: https://www.the-geyser.com/bring-back-the-velvet-ropes/

This podcast gets a nod:

Also, this draft paper (labeled as such, thank you authors) is a critically important read because of the ideas: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=5870623

We finish with our “Discoveries of the Week.”

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

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

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.”

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