This week, guest host Michael Magoulias takes the reins to conduct a lighthearted interview of your intrepid authors, partly to take the sting out of this being tax day in the US.

Michael has worked in scholarly publishing at the University of Chicago Press and is currently at Elsevier. He’s a trenchant observer of the scene and mutual friend.

We tackle some introductory questions and then . . . the Colbert Questionert!

Enjoy this lighthearted episode, including three “Discoveries of the Week.” We’ll be back with more interviews and serious topics next week.

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

Susan Wise Bauer is a historian and author of The Great Shadow: A History of How Sickness Shapes What We Do, Think, Believe, and Buy. I reviewed her book a few weeks ago, and Joy attended a talk she gave William & Mary. Her engaging book seems to come from an era when the history of science existed outside of politics, restoring a calm sense of historical perspective much needed in these troubled times.

In addition teaching for 18 years at William and Mary and writing books, Bauer is a farmer and a publisher.

We discuss a grab-bag of topics, including:

We also share our “Discoveries of the Week:”

Technology and media have become entangled and confused, so much so that the free speech of “no, thanks, not for us” is now called “censorship” and discussing public officials or people on the public payroll in accountable roles is being equated to “doxxing.” Meanwhile, it’s becoming clearer AI isn’t about knowledge, it’s about power.

Media manipulation is what tech has become all about — from social media to AI.

President Trump has been a media manipulator since the beginning:

Which brings us to the new President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST), which is mostly a who’s who of media manipulators masquerading as technologists:

These CEOs have a combined wealth in excess of US$900 billion.

Overall, it looks like a group formed to deliver the Singularity and realize Adam Becker’s worst nightmare — nuclear power, fusion, compute, AI, and techno-authoritarianism.

How are these people being propped up?

We discuss where science fits or doesn’t, and share our zero-gravity “Discoveries of the Week.”

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

Today, we’re joined by Amanda Licastro, Head of Digital Scholarship Strategies and Visiting Associate Professor in English at Swarthmore College.

Amanda recently participated in one of Rick Anderson’s debates at the Researcher to Reader conference in London. This one was titled, “Resolved: AI Tools Will Provide a Net Benefit to Scholarly Communication.” Amanda took the side of opposing that statement.

In these debates, a poll is taken before the participants speak to gauge audience sentiment at the outset. Then, after the speakers exchange opening statements and responses, the poll is repeated.

Before the start of the debate, 80% of the audience believed AI would be a net benefit to scholarly communications. After a professional and well-natured presentation of facts, 52% of the audience came to believe that AI would not be a net benefit to scholarly communications.

We discuss a variety of great and relevant topics, including use of AI in colleges, the dark downsides, and fears of skill, cognitive, and information degradation, as well as tricks and techniques companies are using to force these on us or convince them of their benign value.

It’s a great conversation.

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

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/