I’d expect “publish or perish” to apply broadly in academic fields, but there are several
broad categories of ways in which one can publish. One can indeed come up with a
disagreement with a view that someone else is promoting, but one can also come up
with a view on an entirely different question than anyone else addresses. In a very
abstract sense, this might count as as disagreement, a kind of claim that the “interesting”
area of a field is located in a different area than existing publications have pointed to,
but this isn’t quite the same thing as claiming that the existing claims about the previously
investigated area are wrong.
I’d expect “publish or perish” to apply broadly in academic fields, but there are several broad categories of ways in which one can publish. One can indeed come up with a disagreement with a view that someone else is promoting, but one can also come up with a view on an entirely different question than anyone else addresses. In a very abstract sense, this might count as as disagreement, a kind of claim that the “interesting” area of a field is located in a different area than existing publications have pointed to, but this isn’t quite the same thing as claiming that the existing claims about the previously investigated area are wrong.