We Privatized Knowledge and Socialized Lies

They say a lie gets halfway around the world before the truth finishes tying its sneakers Today, we have effectively institutionalized that dynamic. We have created an ecosystem where misinformation is frictionless. Lies are free, optimized for engagement, and delivered to your phone with algorithmic precision. Meanwhile, the truth—specifically rigorous, peer-reviewed scientific truth—is usually locked behind a $35 paywall or buried under density and jargon that requires a PhD to decrypt.

I’ve been thinking about this asymmetry a lot. We constantly hear people claim they’ve “done their own research.” Usually, that’s a euphemism for watching a confirmation-bias-fueled video. But I find it hard to blame them entirely. When we make the truth expensive and difficult to read, is it any wonder misinformation is winning?

The cost of this confusion is measured in human lives. We know, scientifically, that social isolation leads to disastrous health outcomes, yet we fail to build connected communities. We know that high-sugar diets and sedentary lifestyles are dangerous, yet we don’t change course. Why? Because financial interests and lobbyists have mastered the frictionless lie. They exploit the gap between public knowledge and scientific reality to protect their bottom lines, ensuring that confusion always outpaces the cure.

This is why I’ve been paying close attention to the new Scholar Labs features in Google Scholar.

I work in IT—I spend a lot of time optimizing workflows and testing local AI models—so I’m usually skeptical of the hype cycle. But what I’m seeing here feels different. It feels like a genuine hedge against the noise. Google is testing an AI-powered search that moves beyond simple keyword matching to actual synthesis. If you ask a question in natural language, it attempts to outline the scientific consensus, citing the papers as it goes.

For decades, there has been a cognitive barrier to entry for science. If you didn’t know the specific nomenclature (searching for “myocardial infarction” instead of “heart attack”), you were effectively locked out. Scholar Labs acts as a translator. It allows a curious non-expert to ask a plain question and get a response rooted in literature, not in engagement farming.

But using it highlights a remaining, frustrating fracture in the system. The AI can tell you a paper exists, and it can explain why it matters, but the moment you click the link, the door often slams shut.

I know hosting data costs money. But there is something fundamentally broken about a system where public tax dollars fund research that the public cannot read. I often use open-access repositories like arXiv or SSRN because they feel like what the internet was promised to be: a library for everyone. But most of the world doesn’t know those exist. They use Google.

If Scholar Labs can successfully lower the barrier to understanding complex topics, that is a massive victory. It builds a bridge. But until we solve the paywall issue, that bridge ends at a toll booth most people can’t afford.

I want to believe we can fix this. I want to believe tools like this are the first step toward a world where “doing your own research” actually means engaging with science rather than conspiracy. It’s a bit of a dream, but I am hopeful. If we can get more people to understand that science is a product of our humanity, not a special club for a nameless elite, we can rebuild trust in expertise—and start showing meaningful progress toward helping people build better lives.