TrueSciPhi

Podcast Profile: The DISRUPTED SCIENCE Podcast

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37 episodes
2025 to 2026
Median: 52 minutes
Collection: Science

Description (podcaster-provided):

Themes and summary (AI-generated based on podcaster-provided show and episode descriptions):

This podcast examines how internet-era platforms, business models, and political pressures are reshaping science, especially the way scientific claims are produced, published, evaluated, and spread. Hosted by Kent Anderson and Joy Moore, it combines current-events commentary, interviews, and recurring lighter segments (“Discoveries of the Week”) to explore the modern scientific information ecosystem from the perspective of publishing and credibility.

A major thread is scholarly communication and its incentive structures: open access economics, author- versus reader-centered models, the role of editors and peer review, preprints and their downstream effects on policy, and how metrics and altmetrics influence behavior. Discussions often focus on accountability—what happens when traditional intermediaries (journals, reviewers, librarians, professional societies) are weakened or replaced by platform intermediaries whose incentives revolve around attention, advertising, and growth.

Another core theme is the impact of AI on science and knowledge institutions. The show frequently interrogates claims made for “AI-powered” tools in research, discovery, and publishing, including concerns about synthetic text, quality control, exploitation of labor and expertise, and the possibility of hype cycles or “bubbles” interacting with existing stresses in open access and research integrity. Related topics include paper mills, fraud, retractions, and how automated or scaled systems can amplify low-quality or misleading outputs.

The podcast also tracks how science intersects with politics and public health controversies, including misinformation and disinformation, vaccine narratives, policy battles around research agencies, and attempts to undermine or bypass established expert processes. Guests span librarians, journal editors, scientists, historians, technologists, and critics of the tech industry, bringing perspectives on governance, norms around truth, and the role of institutions in maintaining reliable knowledge.

Across episodes, listeners can expect an emphasis on how rules, incentives, and intermediaries shape what society comes to accept as “known,” and how those forces are changing in the platform and AI eras.