Nobel from Papers or Books?

But why would they? Why not publish? The whole point of doing scientific research is to get your ideas out there. To use the reporter analogy used earlier, it would be like a New York Times editor writing an OP-ED piece and deciding to simply post it in his bedroom or on the bulletin board at a local library or something. It makes no sense. There's nothing wrong with it and surely he would receive credit for it, but it flies in the face of the whole idea behind journalism. It makes no sense to hide your work as a journalist just as it makes no sense to hide your work as a scientist (national security, personal safety, and a couple other reasons aside).

Also, scientific discovers are not just someone figuring out something, writing down an equation, and boom, Nobel Prize. It's usually years of research done by more than one person (in high energy physics, sometimes even hundreds of people!). When a group of 3 people get a Nobel Prize, it is because the Nobel committee believes that they were the 3 biggest contributors to a significant field of study; none of them came up with 1 thing at 1 instant in time that made them worthy of a Prize.

Well if that's true then, what are they waiting for?

So how will they publish? In peer review journal which takes some months to review, the referee and colleagues will (with 8 of 10 probably) just acquired the idea and reframe it in other words to hide the connection.

Do you have any basis for this or did you just make up a number? I wasn't aware that the physics community was a cesspool of crooks and scumbags

Remember the nobel prize takes years to win, it's not an overnight process. Do you really think somebody's going to torpedo their career on the off-chance they can cover up a conspiracy to steal someone else's research for two decades? Especially when that person has probably put their paper on arxiv

Thanks for this new perspective about arxiv. I thought the site is equal to electronic version of the print or substitute for print. You know most magazines now come in ebook format. So I thought the arxiv library was like an online publication thing.

Admit it. Nobel is not just the recognition but the 1.5 million dollars prize too. It's like a lotto prize. So how will they publish? In peer review journal which takes some months to review, the referee and colleagues will (with 8 of 10 probably) just acquired the idea and reframe it in other words to hide the connection. So maybe the Savant need to just publish it here at Physicsforums? In the Nobel Committee investigations, can the archive here be used as floor to establish the originator of the idea? If not here, where else to publish?

In the book Nobel Dreams, the author mentioned how competitions is so much in the community, and elsewhere I read how people are so afraid to submit critical idea for peer review because they are afraid the idea may be acquired. And in one case it is indeed acquired but the author gave the wrong formula and reinserted the right formula the last minute before it went into publication.

Do you have any sources for this? You'll find a plethora of nutjobs that are afraid their ideas will be stolen simply by sitting around this forum for a while. A while ago, I remember it became a near daily occurrence for someone to join the forum, claim they have determined a GUT, and then claim they don't want to say anything to anyone because they know their idea will be stolen.

Of course, when challenged to give any evidence of their own understanding of physics, it comes off as a strange amalgamation of 9th grade physics, stuff they saw on the History Channel, and random ideas that your average person probably needs to do a lot of drugs in order to come up with.