Publication experience (split from spotting pseudoscience)

[Doctordick]

There is one issue pretty well overlooked by the scientific community. That would be the issue of control by the scientific community itself. I have a Ph.D. in theoretical physics achieved in 1971. I went into theoretical physics because I wanted to understand the universe. As a graduate student, I had a bad habit of reading too much. Every time some professor required us to read a journal article relevant to his work (and some referred to work published back in the times hundreds of years ago), I had the habit of reading the specific journal from cover to cover. I can't say I read every journal in Vanderbilt's library but I certainly read most of them.

 

At any rate, reading all those articles gave me a rather unusual perspective on publication. In my opinion most of those publications were not worth the paper they were written on. By the time I got my degree, I had decided not to publish until I had something serious to say.

 

Now add to that the fact that 1971 was a rather special year for the scientific community. Because of complaints about the meaningless of much scientific work (sex life of a butterfly for example), President Nixon pulled the federal support for scientific endeavors and turned the money over to states to distribute. Almost universally, the states used the money to benefit their interests. Scientific research money almost vanished but lots of state offices got raises.

 

For the first time in history, there was unemployment among people with graduate degrees. One of the new faculty members in the physics department at Vanderbilt was pumping gas at a service station when I got my degree. (It was a new world.)

 

At any rate I earned my living outside the field of physics. However, I still spent serious time thinking about an idea I had back when I was a student,. Back when I was in my second year (when I was first introduced into quantum mechanics) I noticed an issue totally ignored by the scientific explanation of relativity. That evening I took my idea to the professor teaching that class and, after about three hours, he agreed that I was correct but I should not mention it to the other students as it would just confuse them. Besides, I couldn't deduce general relativity from it so I must be essentially wrong.

 

At any rate, I only have about three publications in my name. (With me as a party to some specific theoretical work.) As I said above, I continued to think about the issue I noticed back in 1967 and in 1982 I discovered a way to extend the issue to general relativity. So I wrote up an article and tried to publish. I ended up sending it to three different major physics journals. It was refused by all three with very similar notes. All three said it was philosophy and was of no interest to physicists. Their responses were very quick and I suspect the real problem was they didn't know what referee to send the thing to.

 

At any rate, since the professor who I had talked to back in 67 had died, I brought my presentation to the professor who was my adviser on my Ph.D. He refused to even look at the thing (I think he was upset because I didn't earn my living in physics).

 

Well after some discussions with a friend in 1987, I sent my article to two different philosophy journals. Both journals rejected it out of hand immediately. Again, I doubt a referee ever saw the thing. What I found extremely funny was the fact that both journals wrote the same reason for rejecting the thing. They both said it was mathematics and was of no interest to philosophers! I showed that response to a mathematician I knew at the time. He looked at the paper and said it would be of no interest to a mathematician as I presented no new mathematics as far as he was concerned it was physics and well over his head. So thus the physicists say it's philosophy, the philosophers say it's mathematics and the mathematicians say it's physics. All I can say is that all three refuse to even consider the thoughts.

 

In 2013 I composed a well thought out version and paid for publication of a book. The Publisher never sold a single copy and eventually required me to personally purchase every copy he had printed. So, at least the thing exists. If anyone wants to look at the thing, I will provide a free pdf copy if you send a note to my e-mail "doctordick01@yahoo.com".

 

But essentially this note goes to the issue of "scientific publication". In today's world the scientific community has become an authority much as the religious authorities were back in the dark ages. The truth of their position is based on their authority and not upon their ability to back up their theories;

 

Have fun -- Dick

Edited May 18, 2017 by Doctordick

[Lord Antares]

I respect that you poured your heart here. Certainly you've gone through some stages.

 

HOWEVER; that doesn't necessarily mean that what you've presented is correct or applicable. The fact that everyone refused your theory reinforces that (I didn't want to appeal to authority, but since you mention your PhD, I did). How do you know for certain that your theory is good? How do you know that it's conspiracy, rather than your mistake?

 

I know you base this on the fact that different sciences refused your paper thinking they it was a completely different science to theirs, but to me, this doesn't point to a conspiracy or inconsiderateness. It rather points to your paper not being good or being incoherent.

 

Now, hold on a second. If you have a PhD in physics, you know more than I do, but that has nothing to do with your theory. The people who reviewed it also have PhDs and they either couldn't understand it or they saw nothing of value there. You had a very weird way with words in your thread, which lead to people not understanding you. Perhaps, that's a great part of the issue.

 

All in all, my question to you is: How do you know that they are wrong for refusing your paper?

[Doctordick]

They have given no reasons for refusing it!

[Lord Antares]

They did, it was incomprehensible to them. If it was generally well written but with specific crucial mistakes, they would have pointed them out, I'm sure.

 

If you really want, you can present it here in the ''Speculation'' forum. There are many physics professionals who might go through it and give you feedback. I hope you included math appropriately.

Good luck.

[dimreepr]

They have given no reasons for refusing it!

 

Do they need to?

[Prometheus]

Because of complaints about the meaningless of much scientific work (sex life of a butterfly for example),..

 

Well i'm sure it's meaningless to a physicist but it might be very meaningful to a biologist. I know a professor very interested in the reproductive cycle of a particular fish for a while. Now he is hoping to use his research to investigate regenerating human cardiac cells after infarction.

 

Blue skies research should not be stopped because of the limited vision of others: it has a very good historical record.

 

Again, I doubt a referee ever saw the thing....

 

Why is there any doubt about this? Unless philosophy journals are different to science journals, if it went to peer review, you would have received feedback from them regardless of their decision. If you didn't receive it, it didn't go to review.

 

Since most reviewers give their free time to peer review i don't think there is anything wrong with an initial screening process to protect them from wasting time on inappropriate (wrong journal) material.

 

Given the vast number of journals out there i'm sure there would be a journal that straddles philosophy, maths and physics suitable for your material: how deeply have you dug around?

[swansont]

Nothing in the OP is inconsistent with the piece of work being of low quality and little value.

[CharonY]

It is also ironic that OP asserts (not entirely wrongly) that there are too many low-quality publications out there. Yet complains that there is a too high barrier for his specific work...