If I post my theory...

[AboveStanding]

Will or could someone steal it and take 100% credit?

 

 

 

I joined these forums for help because I want to discover something. I think I did, and if someone else tried it then there are more aspects to make this possibly work...

 

 

 

Where do I go to make sure I get the credit?

 

its a theory keep this in mind..

 

 

 

I would be more than happy to share my "theory" but I want to have the chance of testing it first.

[Arete]

Are you asking, if you anonymously make your new theory publicly available on the web could someone present it themselves and take the credit for it?

 

Yes.

 

If you want the credit for it, the best venue would be a scientific journal article or a patent depending on which is more appropriate.

[Phi for All]

its a theory keep this in mind..

 

 

I would be more than happy to share my "theory" but I want to have the chance of testing it first.

It's really not.

 

If you haven't tested it yet, it's still just an idea, maybe an hypothesis. Theory needs lots of tests with lots of supporting evidence and lots of other people testing your idea. Theory is the best you can achieve in science.

[timo]

Are you asking, if you anonymously make your new theory publicly available on the web could someone present it themselves and take the credit for it?

 

Yes.

Actually, outside the bio/medical field stealing ideas and faking data is rather uncommon. In physics, no one cares about random strangers' "theories" at all.

[swansont]

Actually, outside the bio/medical field stealing ideas and faking data is rather uncommon. In physics, no one cares about random strangers' "theories" at all.

I agree.

 

Chances are that if it has any merit at all, someone else has already thought of it and written it up. You also have to be prepared for the very likely event that it's wrong, something that takes non-scientists by surprise quite a lot of the time. But if it is worthwhile, stealing it just isn't worth the embarrassment of exposure. More likely is that someone with credentials would offer to collaborate and polish it up, and thus share the credit. Hard to say, though, since AFAIK it's literally never happened for a theory.

 

There are related examples in astronomy, though — amateur astronomers make discoveries all the time and get shared credit for them.

[Arete]

I agree.

 

I also agree - implicit in my suggestion was that the manuscript would proceed through peer review...

 

Although I have known a few students who have presented/discussed work with established academics, who all of a sudden are working on that idea not long after - whether direct theft or whether it simply got the academic thinking and the initial source of the idea got lost along the way or not, I tend to keep ideas I would like to write grant proposals about in the near future pretty close.

Edited September 18, 2012 by Arete

[ACUV]

People care about random strangers theories all the time, why did that horse jump those fences better than those other horses?, why aren't the heavens going to open up and ruin our nice day at the beach?, why is the moon empty?. The simplest of explanations of an event by the least educated of people can account for the observations.

 

I don't agree that as Swansont says, "Chances are that if it has any merit at all, someone else has already thought of it and written it up.". That would be an acceptance of the lack of original thought, if I am not mistaken.

 

People steal ideas all the time.