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How the Internet Disrupted Science
By Kent Anderson and Joy Moore
Published by Prometheus
Distributed by Simon & Schuster
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Table of Contents
About The Book
Scientific evidence affects policies, business, health outcomes, and economies worldwide. But is that scientific claim you just read reliable? Or nonsense? More and more often, it’s unreliable. The global system managing scientific claims has been hacked by bad ideas, big money, and bad incentives, and is being flooded by sketchy papers.
How the Internet Disrupted Science reveals the untold story of how science has been corrupted by digital information, academic and professional incentives, strange political ideologies, and big money interests. In this explosive expose, Kent Anderson and Joy Moore uncover how notions from the Big Tech world such as ‘move fast and break things’ and ‘information wants to be free’ have corrupted a scientific endeavor that once prided itself on truth-seeking, accountability, and transparency. Soon after that, scientific publishers were abdicating their responsibilities to practitioners and the public, while organized crime rings and conspiracy theorists took over.
In How the Internet Disrupted Science, two experts who witnessed this shift firsthand throughout their decades of experience in scientific publishing share a sprawling, endlessly fascinating tale decades in the making— one that is more relevant with each passing day, as we face new outbreaks, uncertainty around what information we can trust, a gutted scientific infrastructure, and concerns about centralized information in Large Language Models and AI systems. There is a way out of this mess, but only if we return to the self-correcting practices and core values that made science a reliable engine of progress for more than 500 years.
How the Internet Disrupted Science reveals the untold story of how science has been corrupted by digital information, academic and professional incentives, strange political ideologies, and big money interests. In this explosive expose, Kent Anderson and Joy Moore uncover how notions from the Big Tech world such as ‘move fast and break things’ and ‘information wants to be free’ have corrupted a scientific endeavor that once prided itself on truth-seeking, accountability, and transparency. Soon after that, scientific publishers were abdicating their responsibilities to practitioners and the public, while organized crime rings and conspiracy theorists took over.
In How the Internet Disrupted Science, two experts who witnessed this shift firsthand throughout their decades of experience in scientific publishing share a sprawling, endlessly fascinating tale decades in the making— one that is more relevant with each passing day, as we face new outbreaks, uncertainty around what information we can trust, a gutted scientific infrastructure, and concerns about centralized information in Large Language Models and AI systems. There is a way out of this mess, but only if we return to the self-correcting practices and core values that made science a reliable engine of progress for more than 500 years.
Product Details
- Publisher: Prometheus (August 4, 2026)
- Length: 368 pages
- ISBN13: 9781493094400
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Raves and Reviews
“Being a scientist, academic, and public health advocate, I’ve known science is under attack from several angles. This book astounded me. It reveals the ugly truths about the exploitation of scientific publishing by tech-bros and tricksters, and how the idea of greater access to scientific papers crashes head-on into profit through deception. An eye-opening must read.”
– Elizabeth Jacobs, PhD, Founder, Defend Public Health
“The interplay between technology and scientific communication is easily overlooked, and massive changes have taken place over my career. Anderson and Moore’s book explores many topics— from “open access” publishing with its “democratizing” marketing through its abusive business models, to LLMs and the emerging struggles to harness good from AI without accepting all the potential harms. Their book is engaging, enraging, and opinionated… I learned a tremendous amount, and it certainly made me think.”
– Jeremy M. Berg, PhD, Professor of Computational and Systems Biology; Former Editor-in-Chief, Science magazine
“As a medical journal editor, I’m well-aware of the imperfections of scholarly publishing. Technology held promise to address some of those imperfections. Sadly, Kent Anderson and Joy Moore provide a compelling account of how the internet, digital publishing, social media, open access, and other “advances” are conspiring to threaten not only the communication of science, but science itself. They harness their substantial experience to suggest actions to help remedy the mess— I hope the scientific community embraces those suggestions.”
– Christine Laine, MD, MPH, Editor in Chief, Annals of Internal Medicine
“How the Internet Disrupted Science demonstrates that what started as an effort to provide digital access to scientific journals with rigorous editorial and peer-review has devolved into a playground of advertisements disguised as papers. The journey is a frightening one, but things can be rectified in ways suggested by the authors. A bracing read.”
– Martin Frank, PhD, Executive Director, American Physiological Society (retired)
“This highly informative book should be in every academic library and be required reading for anyone involved in the information field.”
– Library Journal
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