(This essay is based on a presentation I gave in the OpenAthens Access Lab series on February 24, 2025, titled “Misinformation, Disinformation, and Trust in Scholarly Communication: Challenges and Strategies.” Part 2 of the post is also available.)

First Things First: Definitions

“Misinformation” is most commonly defined as “false or inaccurate information,” whereas the term “disinformation” is generally used to describe misinformation that is wielded deliberately to mislead. The distinction between the two categories of false information lies in intention, which makes it a bit problematic – to discern the difference we must know not just that the information is false, but also the intent of the person wielding the false information, which sometimes seems easy, but may be more difficult than we think. Furthermore, talking about mis- or disinformation at all requires us to deal with the issue of truth – which seems to make everyone uncomfortable, often including those who wish to act as misinformation watchdogs. For example: last year, here in The Scholarly Kitchen, I interviewed the principals of the American Sunlight Project, an organization dedicated to “protect(ing) American democracy from the threat of disinformation.” One of my interview questions had to do with how the organization would deal with difficult issues in which facts themselves are in dispute – would they remain silent on such issues, or “follow a particular line of strategy in deciding what side to take on the factual question”? They responded that they “have no interest in arbitrating truth,” which strikes me as fundamentally incoherent, not to say disingenuous: if your stated goal is to fight false information, you are absolutely setting yourself up as an arbitrator of truth. To claim to be fighting disinformation while also claiming not to be interested in “arbitrating truth” is like claiming to be a firefighter while also saying you’re not interested in discriminating between buildings that are and are not on fire.

In the past year or so, some have suggested the existence of another category of mis/disinformation: malinformation. This term is used to describe information that is technically true, but is taken out of context or presented in a partial manner so as to mislead.

And I would suggest yet one more example: what I call uninformation and some have called (after George Orwell) memory-holing. This is when information that was once, or should be made public is deliberately hidden or suppressed – not because the information is false, but because those with stewardship over it simply do not wish it to be made public or because they want to hide evidence that it was made public in the past. Governments, media outlets, pressure groups, and political organizations do this all the time, of course; unfortunately, sometimes scholars and researchers do as well, sometimes by publicly asserting that others’ research does not exist, other times by refusing to make their research results public out of fear that the data might prove useful to their ideological opponents, or for any number of other reasons.

For purposes of this discussion, I will use the term “misinformation” generically to refer to all of the above, making finer distinctions where context requires.

Fighting disinformation means assessing truthfulness. To claim to be fighting disinformation without “arbitrating truth” is like claiming to be a firefighter without discriminating between buildings that are and are not on fire.

One other important thing to note at the outset: disinformation is weaponized by definition. People do not intentionally spread false information (or suppress true information) without some kind of malign intent. They may say, and in a few cases actually believe, that they’re committing a small offense against honesty and intellectual integrity in the interest of a greater good, but far more often, I believe it’s safe to assume that deliberate attempts to deceive arise from a desire to do some kind of harm.

Underlying Assumptions

Meaningful discussion of misinformation in scholarly discourse is necessarily built on several important assumptions:

• Truth exists (otherwise there is no coherent definition of “misinformation”)
• Truth is not purely subjective (otherwise there is no coherent definition of “falsehood”)
• It is possible to discern truth from falsehood (otherwise, discussing misinformation is pointless)

I will add two additional assumptions that inform my treatment of this issue, though neither is strictly, logically required for a discussion of disinformation; both of these might be called statements of belief:

• Truth matters in itself, apart from its instrumental value (and regardless of who speaks it)
• Not all truths and falsehoods are equally consequential

If we take the above assumptions as given, then some very important questions follow naturally in the context of scholarly communication: How do we discriminate between the true, the false, and the misleading in science and scholarship? How do we decide which sources to trust – and to what degree should we place implicit trust in any information source? In the context of libraries, how do we balance the need to discriminate between truth and falsehood with the need to present a diverse spectrum of views on contested issues (not to mention the need to provide access to bad or false content for educational purposes)? In the context of publishing, how do we navigate the line between legitimate minority views and faulty scholarship?

These questions are neither simple nor easy.

On the one hand, we understand the importance of trusting science; on the other hand, it has long been obvious (and has recently become more so) that not everything presented to the world as “science” is trustworthy.

On the one hand, a fundamental driver of progress in scholarship is the successful challenging of established conventional wisdom by upstart minority hypotheses; on the other hand, upstart hypotheses are often held by only a minority of scholars or scientists precisely because they’re wrong.

On the one hand, the scholarly communication ecosystem needs gatekeepers to filter out nonsense and – even more dangerous – falsehood that is not obviously nonsense; on the other hand, gatekeepers are human beings with prejudices, ideological commitments, commercial involvements, and other interests that may conflict with their interest in dispassionately assessing the validity of scholarly information.

The obvious key to navigating these difficulties is relevant expertise combined with honest critical thinking and analysis – which are essential not only in discriminating between truth and falsehood, but also in assessing the relative importance of different truths and falsehoods. The problem with critical thinking, of course, is first of all that it is difficult and demanding – and second of all, that when we engage in it in an honest way, it does not always lead us to conclusions that we like or that are convenient for us, either operationally or ideologically. New truths (or old truths that are new to us) might have disruptive implications for our processes and workflows, our understandings of our disciplines, and even our social and political beliefs. The question for every scholar, scientist, librarian, and editor, is: how willing am I to accommodate truth that challenges my prejudices and preferences? Can I assess such information in a way that reflects fealty to actual truth over fealty to my preferred understanding of the world?

Fundamental Mission Differences between Libraries and Publishers

When it comes to misinformation, it is important to recognize a significant difference in mission between libraries and scholarly publishers. For libraries, providing access to both true and false information is fundamental to the mission; for publishers, the filtering out of false information is fundamental to the mission. The former assertion may seem counterintuitive, but upon reflection it should be obvious: A research library can’t support the study of political science without providing access to examples of (for example) misleading wartime propaganda or false claims by politicians; it can’t support inquiry into religious history without collecting a broad range of documents containing mutually contradictory statements about spiritual matters; it can’t support the study of economic history without providing examples of false and disproven economic theories. Research libraries exist not only to provide access to truth, but to support teaching and research, both of which rely not only on access to high quality information from a wide range of viewpoints and perspectives, but also on access to instructive examples of falsehood and dishonesty.

The purpose of a scholarly publisher is different, however. A journal or book publisher seeks to acquire and publish scholarship that is true and reliable, and to filter out that which is false and misleading. (At least this is true of legitimate scholarly publishers; there are deceptive publishers that claim to produce legitimate peer-reviewed scholarship, but will in fact publish anything submitted, scholarly or truthful or not, as long as the author pays a publishing fee. These are not actual scholarly publishers and are not considered in this discussion.) The function of a scholarly publisher is to support teaching and research by providing access to truth, rather than to support them by providing access both to truth and to pedagogically useful falsehood.

(In Part 2: Research integrity and misinformation; also, the importance of intellectual humility when negotiating the difference between disinformation and disagreement)