The Misinformation Machine

How Fraud, AI, and Greed are Corrupting Science

By: James Lawrence Powell

Narrated by: Virtual Voice

In the time it takes to read this sentence, artificial intelligence will have created another counterfeit scientific paper. By the time you finish this paragraph, bot networks will have spread thousands of false medical claims across social media. Welcome to the age of industrialized scientific fraud.

From the hydroxychloroquine delusion that cost lives during COVID-19 to paper mills churning out fake research for profit, science writer James Lawrence Powell exposes a crisis threatening the very foundation of human knowledge.

Predatory journals publish anything for a fee. Preprint servers distribute unvetted claims at digital speed. Bot armies manufacture the illusion of scientific consensus. And now artificial intelligence can fabricate entire research papers—complete with convincing data, plausible methods, and realistic images—in minutes.

Powell traces how we arrived at this moment, from artisanal frauds like Piltdown Man to today's automated deception factories. He profiles the fraud detectives—scientists armed with laptops, persistence, and sharp eyes—who stand as our last line of defense. And he confronts an uncomfortable truth: the machinery of scientific communication, built on trust, has become a weapon against the knowledge it was designed to protect.

The consequences are not abstract. Corrupted medical research leads to treatments that harm. Fabricated data shapes public policy. Each fraudulent paper that enters the scientific record spreads error through the entire corpus of human knowledge.

The Misinformation Machine is both a warning and a call to action. Science remains humanity's most reliable means of determining what is true. If we allow it to be corrupted beyond recovery, something essential in the human spirit will have died with it.

"This gripping and remarkable synthesis documents the increase in fraudulent science, predatory journals, instant communication of misinformation, compromised peer review, and deliberate deception. Powell presents a powerful case that all scientists and societies based on truth need to wake up and face these escalating issues that threaten the credibility of science itself. Every scientist and editor should read it."

—James Kennet, member of the National Academy of Sciences and Professor Emeritus, UCSB



About the Author

James Lawrence Powell has written twelve books on science and earth history, including Mysteries of the Deep, a finalist for the PROSE Award from the Association of American Publishers. He served on the National Science Board under Presidents Reagan and George H. W. Bush.