The problem of fake news and the spread of misinformation has garnered a lot of attention in recent years. The incentives and norms that give rise to the problem, however, are not unique to journalism. Insofar as academics and journalists are working towards the same goal, i.e., publication, they are both under pressures that pervert. This chapter has two aims. First, to integrate conversations in philosophy of science, epistemology, and metaphilosophy to draw out the publishing incentives that promote analogous problems (...) of fake news and misinformation in academic research communities more broadly. Second, to argue for a (partial) solution. This chapter argues that research communities benefit when authors believe what they argue for in print and it warns against attempts to loosen our publication norms to permit publishing without belief. (shrink)

This paper offers a defense of ‘publishing without belief’ (PWB) – the view that authors are not required to believe what they publish. I address objections to the view ranging from outright denial and advocacy of a belief norm for publication, to a modified version that allows for some cases of PWB but not others. I reject these modifications. In doing so, I offer both an alternative story about the motivations for PWB and a diagnosis of the disagreement over its (...) permissibility. The original defense focused on consequentialist reasons for allowing PWB, offering mostly defensive arguments against potential criticisms. But I argue that once we shift our focus to the reasons why authors might be prone to PWB, we see a difference in two types of motivation: whereas I imagine PWB as arising from underconfident agents, critics point to cagey or nefarious authorial practices, or authors’ failure to clarify their own degrees of belief. Underlying the debate over norms of philosophical publishing, we find two different conceptions of philosophy itself. (shrink)