The DISRUPTED SCIENCE Podcast

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 pr...

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 accoun...

Today, we’re talking with Nick Evans, who was in the Department of Philosophy in the College of Fine Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences at the University of Massachusetts at Lowell, and who recently moved to the Department of Political Science, a move he explains in the interview. Joy met Nick at this year’s Peer Review Congress in Chicago, where he talked about his research around preprints an...

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 th...

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 inev...

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...

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 idolize...

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...

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 enligh...

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: ht...

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 ret...

A July 2025 preprint on Preprints.org (MDPI) gets withdrawn, and the caterwauling about censorship begins. This episode helps you get your bearings, we hope. Show Notes The MDPI withdrawal: https://www.preprints.org/manuscript/202507.2155/v1 The MAHA Substack complaint: https://www.thefocalpoints.com/p/breaking-mdpi-censors-one-of-the  

The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative (CZI) is widely reported as a philanthropy. In fact, it is an LLC operated by the holding company the family uses, sells assets off after acquisition, and is platforming biomedical preprints and other scientific information for its own purposes. It has effectively acquired bioRxiv and medRxiv, operating them in a new entity, openRxiv Corp. In this episode, we explore...

In this episode, we dive deeper into the background of Jim O’Neill, the interim acting Director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on the heels of the messy firing of the Senate-approved Director (and actual scientist) Susan Monarez. It turns out, the Silicon Valley desire to have science become predictable, end death, and create endless wealth for a few is really driving a lo...

Today, we dive into a few aspects of the imposition of tech thinking into the scientific endeavor, including business models, AI, accidental certifications, and new NIH policies.    Show Notes Jessica Knurick post: https://drjessicaknurick.substack.com/p/trust-the-science-doesnt-mean-what Comet Plus: https://www.perplexity.ai/hub/blog/introducing-comet-plus "Scholarly Kitchen" guest post by Mike O...

It's our first interview for the podcast, and we landed a great guest! Jason Steinhauer is a “public historian” working at the intersection of history, tech, media and politics. He writes and speaks about how social media, tech, and A.I. are shaping our history, politics, democracy, and future. His 2021 book, “History, Disrupted,” touches on many of the same issues we discuss in our forthcoming bo...

A brief episode to talk about where the podcast has been and exciting plans for where it is going next. Also, two great "Discoveries of the Week," and don't miss this week's silly sign-off in honor of National Joke Day.  

Paid OA has co-opted editors into paid placement collaborators within publishers. We talk about the implications of this, explore it as a cleaner thought experiment and its implications, and reflect on how dumb a business it is if the goal is article placement commerce. Also, we discuss the related issue of why paper mills and others exist and are flooding the literature. PNAS paper: https://www.p...

In this episode, we talk about "gaslight" preprints, retractions, and then explore some of the signs that we may be approaching an "AI winter" due to high expenses, lackluster offerings, a conceptual bubble bursting, and more. Inspired by Ed Zitron's work, we apply it to some scientific publishing offerings, as well.   Our "Discoveries of the Week" involve music, books, and delight.   Show Notes "...

The USDA is quashing scientific research. Ozzy leaves us. And two discoveries of the week. Music stings provided by friend of the pod, Lucas, at Provoke the Truth: https://provokethetruth.net/   Related posts: https://www.the-geyser.com/scientific-pubs-epstein-file/ https://www.the-geyser.com/sci-pubs-epstein-files-part-2/ https://www.the-geyser.com/fascism-comes-to-the-farm/  

We tackle a host of topics and try new technology Sleuths and Dirty Laundry Peer Review Congress Agenda YLE Praising NIH Caps AUP "Mass Resignation" Update on "Gaslight Journals" Rick Tackles CC Adam Becker's New Book and Kara Swisher Interview ALSO, "Discoveries of the Week" that will chill you out and make you feel alive!

In this week's special episode, we cover some recent news (medical groups suing HHS, NSF grants icing out biomedicine, and sleuths being leveraged for anti-science), dive into the recent interview the Director of the NIH had with Charlie Kirk, give a book update, and share our Discoveries of the Week.

We summarize a terrible week for science, provide a book update, share some News of the Week, add a couple of justifiable rants, and provide two nice science-based discoveries you can use. Four thumbs up!   Link to the third thumb.

Newsletters are reshaping science policy in new ways thanks to various technologies and business models. We explore. Also, our new "Rant of the Week" feature gets a test drive, so let us know what you think! And, new "Discoveries of the Week" — two great new summer reads from the non-fiction aisle.

One of our first episodes, with lots of good stuff about how bioRxiv and medRxiv are carrying water for MAHA, our first look at "gaslight science," and a recommendation for "The AI Con" and pickleball in an abandoned Dick's.