March 4, 2026 — Why Should We Trust You?

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/ Subscribe to our podcast Subscribe on Apple Podcasts Subscribe on Spotify Subscribe on Amazon Music/Audible Subscribe on YouTube Music provided by Provoke the Truth — https://provokethetruth.net/