Taking hoaxes seriously: Epistemic dangers,academic privilege,and social relations of believability

Abstract

In ‘Taking “Nonsense” Seriously’, Matthew Hannah (2026) explains that cross-epistemic fluency has been a crucial factor informing the creation, circulation, and recognition of hoaxes and spoofs. Hannah is concerned with how and why, even when a hoax or spoof is apparent, such interventions in the academy can be seen as ‘sense-bearing, valuable, or potentially fruitful’. There is much sense in Hannah's proposition to take spurious papers seriously, but for whatever promise there is in the hoax and hoax-like deception, there are perils. In addition to concerns over the time and labor being asked of reviewers, there are broader questions of privilege and risks if/when hoaxes jump from the academic milieu into a broader public. The current surge in anti-intellectualism, moral panics over critical race theory, gender identity, and sexuality, and persistent trivializing of pressing issues (such as climate change) as hoaxes highlight how sense and nonsense circulate in epistemic echo chambers in and beyond the university in ways that can inform fascistic and facetious battle cries in polarizing culture wars.