How do i get professional feedback on theories?

[too-open-minded]

I have quite a few theories, tons actually.

 

Physics, psychology, biology, and cosmology are all categories i'm interested in and have theories for.

I've been trying to get professors emails but the only ones responding to me are professors at small colleges and even then I won't get a response till a few months down the road. Where can I submit some of my theories to get legitimate feedback from?

[StringJunky]

You'll get quite legitimate and professional feedback here: there's enough degree-level people here more than capable of assessing your ideas. Most importantly, once told something by someone, you need to check it yourself and if right you will gain confidence in that person...eventually, you will see those you have confidence in as your mentors.

[too-open-minded]

Well I guess i'm just crazy and that's why my theories make sense to me.

 

Anything I post up here just turns into a debate :/

 

Thankyou for your input.

[StringJunky]

Anything I post up here just turns into a debate :/

 

 

It's a fact of scientific life that the people who consider others ideas are going to automatically attempt to highlight the flaws in their ideas...its called Peer Review . It's not custom to support an idea until every angle has been questioned and satisfactorily explained.

 

If you can't stand the heat of critical questioning it's best not to post your hypotheses*...it's perfectly normal and you should expect a debate.

 

 

*Hypothesis is an idea that has yet to be generally accepted...like yours.

 

Theory is an idea that is generally accepted and has evidence to support it.

[Phi for All]

Anything I post up here just turns into a debate :/

Are you saying you don't want to learn from discussing your hypotheses, you just want people to accept them without question?

[ewmon]

Many people early in their scientific pursuits simply don't realize the vast amount of labor, time and money that goes into research. When teachers or textbooks present any history of science, they almost always show single lines of successes and improvements, and none of the many. many, many failures by others along the way.

 

This being a year for the Summer Olympics, I'll use the 100 metres dash as an example. I think this popular view of the history of science can be equated to a listing of the progression of record times in the 100 metres dash. One receives the impression, for example, that the top nine record times (shown in the link) involved only several men from a few countries over the past 10 or 15 years, when in reality, these records culminated from countless boys and men throughout the world running perhaps millions of races and learning, comparing and practicing techniques for over 100 years.

Edited July 23, 2012 by ewmon

[too-open-minded]

No, not at all and I do respectfully listen to the flaws people point out in my hypothesis's. Sorry for the misconception between hypothesis and theory. Its just I think people misunderstand what I'm trying to say more than they point out flaws. I have learned much from people pointing things out but at the same time people just dont really understand what i'm trying to say, they misinterpret a good amount of what i propose.

 

I'm not saying i'm too intelligent for people to understand me, if anything its the lack of knowledge I have which causes people to misinterpret my hypothesis's. I have to dumb things down for my vocabulary and understanding but in the process cuts other people off from understanding it.

 

It's just really frustrating having people take what I say the wrong way and tell me i'm wrong. That's why it seems to me that everyone just wants to debate.

[Phi for All]

It's just really frustrating having people take what I say the wrong way and tell me i'm wrong. That's why it seems to me that everyone just wants to debate.

I'm sure you've read threads other than the ones you've started, and you can see that the terminology is very important in science. Definitions used by everyone must be the same, otherwise you see more quibbling about terms than discussion. As an example, I think quibbling is what you mean rather than "debate". Debate is just a formal discussion, debate is what we do here.

 

Those who've studied science their whole lives have added layer upon layer to their knowledge. It's the way science works, with theories overlapping and supporting each other with evidence that compounds their predictive power. It's tough to jump into that with your own ideas and not encounter some turbulence.

 

I personally like to read more than I post. The scientific method gives me explanations I can trust, and mainstream knowledge has the most evidence gathered using that method, with the most scientists analyzing, discussing, debating and arguing the merits of ideas, hypotheses and especially theories.

[StringJunky]

No, not at all and I do respectfully listen to the flaws people point out in my hypothesis's. Sorry for the misconception between hypothesis and theory. Its just I think people misunderstand what I'm trying to say more than they point out flaws. I have learned much from people pointing things out but at the same time people just dont really understand what i'm trying to say, they misinterpret a good amount of what i propose.

 

I'm not saying i'm too intelligent for people to understand me, if anything its the lack of knowledge I have which causes people to misinterpret my hypothesis's. I have to dumb things down for my vocabulary and understanding but in the process cuts other people off from understanding it.

 

It's just really frustrating having people take what I say the wrong way and tell me i'm wrong. That's why it seems to me that everyone just wants to debate.

 

Glad to see you using taking on the right word, hypothesis, and the plural of it is hypotheses (ending is pronounced -seez).

 

Half the battle is speaking/writing in a language that your target readership understands. Science has quite a few conventions, like for example the difference between the two words I pointed out. Watch out for patterns in the way and words the scientists use here...they mean specific things that other scientists understand. Learn these as you go along and you will find they understand you better if you use them in the same way.

Edited July 23, 2012 by StringJunky

[doG]

Anything I post up here just turns into a debate :/

That's science for you...

[too-open-minded]

Well thankyou guys for reassuring me that people don't like to hear something negating what they have grown to believe. I understand some of what I have to say goes against popular belief. Not to forget that people misunderstand me because my terminology is off.

 

I'm starting college soon and never paid attention in school so hopefully i'll become knowledgeable enough to be able to better explain my hypotheses one day, Thank you.

 

None of you know any scientific journals that review hypotheses?

[Phi for All]

None of you know any scientific journals that review hypotheses?

I'm just going to say this straight out, nothing personal, but you're at least four years away from publishing in any reputable journal. You won't be taken seriously because your terminology isn't up to standard and your knowledge of mainstream science is only at high school level. There's a lot you're about to learn in college. You have to crawl before you can walk. Beginning actors shouldn't tackle Shakespeare, 1st year med students shouldn't attempt brain surgery and novice scientists shouldn't try to get hypotheses peer-reviewed.

 

You should study the scientific method. This will show you how scientific knowledge is like building bridges. You always start with the best foundation you can, and make sure each part you build onto is solid, and each part you build with fits with those before it, so you can trust each foot of the bridge as you're building it. Intuition needs to be tested repeatedly before it's trusted, and I think you have a lot of intuition telling you you're right about your ideas. That's fine, but a good scientist never takes anything for granted unless it's been repeatedly tested using sound methodology.

 

Imagine someone saying, "Wow, I have a whole new way to build bridges, and I built this one from scratch using my new idea. It hasn't really been tested until now, so all of you just trust me and go ahead and drive your cars across and you'll see how great my idea is." This is not how bridges are built, and it's not the way science is done.

[too-open-minded]

Oh I know its not gonna be easy lol, I'm just really impatient XD

 

To be honest the whole thing about me submitting my stuff in is I don't care if i get credit for it, I'm just trying to pass good ideas out so that someone knowledgeable can do something with them.

 

So my logic is that if someone thinks their is anything to what they are reading, they will research it themselves.

 

I've been emailing professors and colleges My hypotheses and pretty much saying hey if you want to go ahead and run with this idea.

 

 

I'm worried as hell that were not going to make it off this planet from our own self destruction, i'm just trying to stop that as soon as possible. Yeah i've got a bunch of bullcrap little hypotheses but theirs a select few I know theirs something to other people don't see.

[ACG52]

To be honest the whole thing about me submitting my stuff in is I don't care if i get credit for it, I'm just trying to pass good ideas out so that someone knowledgeable can do something with them.

 

 

But they're not really good ideas. You're coming up with them without knowing anything about the subject. Before you can come up with a good idea, you have to know something about what's going on in the universe.

[too-open-minded]

How do you know what ideas I try to get out to educated people?

 

How do you know i'm educated on a subject or not?

 

I'll admit my education is pretty crappy. I have done some of my own research With Google and Bing, but you only get so far doing that. I'm teaching myself physics right now with 2 different books.

 

 

This is what I mean about debating, had you read what people posted before you; you would have already seen this stated. You don't need to reiterate what everybody else says just because i'm not smart doesn't mean i'm an idiot.

 

I'm guessing a good amount of my threads if not all of them annoy you. I understand your want to tell me to stfu lol.

[ajb]

I've been trying to get professors emails but the only ones responding to me are professors at small colleges and even then I won't get a response till a few months down the road.

 

It can vary person to person, but overall researchers are happy to talk about things. Usually, if I ask someone I can get a reply, but not always.

[CharonY]

The point is that while you are still learning the basics, it is very unlikely that you will come up with any relevant or novel ideas. As others have said, you have to know the current knowledge on a given subject (which takes quite a while to master) and then you can develop new ones. Many ideas that you will have now, will appear foolish to you, once you have studied them further.

 

One of the first prerequisites of learning is humility. One has to acknowledge that the knowledge one currently has is insufficient. Only then does one open ones mind to learning. Incidentally, much of the college time will be spent realizing how little we know in various fields. Much what we have learned from textbooks in high school are just extreme simplifications to make the topics more digestible. The desire to try to understand even a tiny little bit more is what drives scientists. But first one has to have a (somewhat) clear vision what is known and what not.

[ajb]

How do you know i'm educated on a subject or not?

 

Well, typicality it takes only a few moments of reading someone's work to see that they are not educated. The style and language are not right, the work is based on misconceptions and is not of the standard rigour.

[juanrga]

Occasionally I get a pair of emails with someone (not a scientist) trying to explain me their revolutionary 'theory'.

 

I do not doubt of their sincere attempt to help scientists to develop science, but they do not understand science because they never studied it!

 

As ajb said, you know their level of knowledge after reading a pair of paragraphs. Most of them do not understand that science is an accumulative endeavour, with new theories complementing or extending previous theories. When someone email you saying that relativity is wrong or quantum mechanics is wrong, you know that this person does not know the most basic aspects of science. Each new theory may explain new phenomena, but also be in complete concordance with previous phenomena already explained by the old theories. This is the reason which you may study first what is known, before you try to improve/extend what we already know.

 

You say that you are impatient. Do you know the average age of current Nobel winners? Today, science is hard and very extense. You need many years of study before becoming an expert in a narrow field and you need many more years (and large doses of good luck) before you make an important contribution to a narrow field.

 

When someone is emailed with a supposed revolutionary idea/hypothesis, but the email reflects a lack of understanding of basic aspects in the field, the receptor of the email receives more or less the next hidden message:

 

I do not want to waste my time studying what is already known, but you would waste your time studying my idea/hypothesis, finding my flaws, and explaining to me what those flaws are.

[too-open-minded]

Trust me, I understand everything yall are telling me.

 

I know that before I can develop a well constructed hypothesis, I need to not only be educated but have some experience in the research field. I know its not going to come easy. Even Einstein said your going to get 99 things wrong before you get 1 right.

 

 

 

Like I said, I'm just trying to help. My teachers have belittled me my whole life in front of my classmates. None of you are going to humiliate me lol, its just frustrating when nobody understands you. I'm going to go to college and be knowledgeable one day, I'm still going to email professors and such my hypotheses until I have credentials for people to listen to me.

[Phi for All]

I'm going to go to college and be knowledgeable one day, I'm still going to email professors and such my hypotheses until I have credentials for people to listen to me.

Just be careful not to poison the well, effendi.