 The subfield of formal social epistemology arguably started with Philip Kitcher’s 1990 paper “The Division of Cognitive Labor”, which takes a rationality-based approach to the question of why scientists might divide labor effectively, even when they agree on which problems are most promising. By rationality-based approach, we mean that Kitcher represents scientists as utility-maximizers, in much the same way that economists represent people as utility-maximizers. The key innovation, though, is that scientists are assumed to derive utility from credit—a proxy for recognition and approbation of one’s scientific work, along with all the benefits (promotions, grants, etc.) that follow. The sociologist Robert Merton was one of the first to recognize the credit motives of scientists (Merton 1973). Models using this assumption are often called credit economy models.