Although the authors’ personal narratives give the book urgency and immediacy, its larger ambition is diagnostic. Mann and Hotez seek to explain how we arrived at a moment in which anti-science disinformation has become, in their words, “orchestrated,” and credible scientists are recast as public enemies.

Seventy years ago, federally supported research was often celebrated as creating an “endless frontier”—a driver of economic growth, national strength, and democratic vitality. Today, the incentives often run in the opposite direction. When scientific findings threaten entrenched economic or political interests, science itself becomes the target.

To explain this inversion, the authors identify five reinforcing forces that together generate sustained pressure on publicly funded science—what they alliteratively call plutocrats, petro-states, pros, protagonists, and the press. Rather than treating attacks as episodic or personality-driven, they map them as systemic features of the modern political economy and information environment.