Could Einstein's Revolutionary Ideas Be Published Today?

[turbo]

If you have a good idea, and develop it, you can get published even if the author(s) have no affiliation with a college, research program, etc. It's not that hard to do.

Note that using the "Einstein" model implies that the research work will be not only ground-breaking, but will address fundamental concepts that have far-reaching consequences for existing models. Any such papers would receive far more scrutiny than normal, and it is highly unlikely that any author outside of prominent research programs or academia would even get a foot in the door.

 

[moe darklight]

And here's one fascinating question: how can the 0.00001% of works (I'm rather less optimistic than you it seems) that are worthy of being published be discovered ?

And to make the matter personal: how much of your time or wealth would you be willing to give up to take part in any such process of discovery? Especially given the extremely long odds on you playing an important part in any such discovery.

not much

I agree. The odds are not good, and it would be pretty stupid for a physicist to sit around reading mountains of crap in the hopes of finding the next unsuspected breakthrough. There must be some sort of filter, and professional affiliations is one.

People are drawn to the underdog story: the romantic idea that the next great genius is "somewhere out there" and he will turn the world of science and reality as we know it on its head. People read these stories, and watch movies based on this, and some delusional individuals come to believe that "hey! I'm a janitor just like that guy from goodwill hunting! I bet I'm a genius too! boy, them learned university folk don't know what's coming once I send them my paper proving all matter is actually made out of tiny unicorns."

So for the most part, I agree. I was just pointing out that I don't see science as a significant endeavor solely from a utilitarian aspect, and why someone would be driven to want to be published -- I wasn't saying that it's necessarily a productive way to spend one's time to go looking for that exception when there are thousands of perfectly capable professionals.

 

[turbo]

I was just pointing out that I don't see science as a significant endeavor solely from a utilitarian aspect, and why someone would be driven to want to be published -- I wasn't saying that it's necessarily a productive way to spend one's time to go looking for that exception when there are thousands of perfectly capable professionals.

Sometimes, you have to do research just to see what turns up. It's a matter of curiosity. When something does turn up that is either unexpected or poorly-addressed in the literature, why not publish it? As long as your work is repeatable, rigorous, and original, it will get published. And you would be surprised how many very basic and fruitful lines of inquiry have been neglected despite the "thousands of perfectly capable professionals" in the field. If the work is tedious, grinding, or perhaps just not "glamorous" enough to attract funding, it will not get done by the pros.

 

[wolram]

If one wants to be pesermistic, astrophysics died when C was found to be a limit to travel times, or at least usless to us humans.

 

[Nereid]

[...]

What if you love/are obsessed about/{insert other words here} solving puzzles (or unravelling them, or analysing them, or attacking them, or ...)? That broad, general activity brings you great pleasure.

Now not all puzzles are created equal; for you the Sudoku in your local newspaper may pale in comparison to reducing the 1σ error bars on estimates of H0 by 10%, say. If so, then publication is an important part of your puzzle solving, if only (also) because puzzle solving is better done in some sort of collective fashion, within a framework that you believe works reasonably efficiently (nothing worse than solving puzzles in what you think are grossly inefficient ways; life is too short, and the interesting puzzles too many for that).

Ok, but that means that your success in collectively solving the puzzle resides essentially in you being an integral part in an ongoing endeavor. So your measure of success resides in how much you are capable of integrating a collective effort and in how much your contribution "matches in" with the currently estimated important activities in a particular field. Well, that's actually nothing else than measuring in how much you, as a professional, would integrate profitably the current working environment. But that means that you have to do something which is totally in line with what's being done, and what people are interested in. If you really have a good contribution in that sense then I'm not only pretty sure you'll get published, I'd rather say that if you do that, you will probably not have much problems collaborating with any or other research group or professor or whatever: cheap (free!) extra labor is always welcome! Only 1) most of that stuff is pretty boring 2) in order to even know what is fashionable at the moment, you have to be in the field like a professional 3) this is at the opposite end of most if not all "amateur" contributions, who are rather in opposition with the latest fashionable idea.

This is worth exploring a bit.

I'll use examples from astronomy, because I'm most familiar with that field.

http://www.aavso.org/" (American Association of Variable Star Observers, though it's an international organisation) has lots and lots of members, many of the very, very active. All but a handful are amateurs (there are a few salaried positions within AAVSO itself).

Professionals collaborate with them all the time, on specific projects as well as generally. Many papers have been published, not all with professionals as lead author, or even with a professional as author at all.

With some slight extensions or edits, I think we can apply vanesch's description to these folk; and we can also ask why it is that those AAVSO members who have published did so ... it's pretty obvious, isn't it?

Which leads to this: if you're a non-professional, and you have something you want published about variable stars, there's a well-established organisation that is about as close to being tailor-made for your desires as you could possibly hope for*!

(more later, including a quick look at "Citizen Science")

* unless, perhaps you are using 'variable stars' as a cloak for a paper on, say, "why Einsteen woz rong"!

 

[LowlyPion]

Isn't the real issue that if Einstein could publish ... what would he publish today? Would he even have anything to publish?

Are we to suppose that E = mc² would still be hanging around to be determined?

What's to say that he wouldn't be living a life of contented mediocrity in the different circumstances of today's world?

 

[Evo]

All of this talk about Einstein, but no one has mentioned the fact that Einstein had a degree in Theoretical Physics and received his PhD in 1905, the same year he published his first paper. Someone without an education, or working on something completely outside of their formal education, bringing up Einstein as a comparison is rather silly.

 

[vanesch]

With some slight extensions or edits, I think we can apply vanesch's description to these folk; and we can also ask why it is that those AAVSO members who have published did so ... it's pretty obvious, isn't it?

People shouldn't get me wrong, I didn't say that it is meaningless to publish. I would say that if you have something you think is worth publishing, that you did on your own, and that you might think could give you some rewards (even only on the human level) by getting it published, then publishing it is part of the pleasure.

The point is, if no journal WANTS your stuff, that means then that your material is visibly *not* interesting the public the journal addresses, why would you insist ? Ok, you can be sad that a certain pleasure you were hoping for (the joy of getting kudos ?) didn't turn out to be present.

 

[Nereid]

Isn't the real issue that if Einstein could publish ... what would he publish today? Would he even have anything to publish?

Are we to suppose that E = mc² would still be hanging around to be determined?

What's to say that he wouldn't be living a life of contented mediocrity in the different circumstances of today's world?

"Could Einstein publish today?" is certainly the title of this thread.

However, in the OP I said this:

The general topic I'd like to discuss is the extent to which someone "outside" the mainstream could get paradigm-changing, comparable-to-General-Relativity (or Darwin's theory of evolution, or ...) ideas published in relevant peer-reviewed journals.

and, after some development, I asked this:

Which brings me to the thing I'm most interested in discussing: whence comes this apparently persistent myth that revolutionary ideas in physics would be difficult to get published, in relevant peer-reviewed journals? Why do many apparently smart and well-educated people feel this way?

I think it's been pretty well established that should any outsider develop an idea in the same class as Einstein's, they'd have no difficulty worth speaking of to get it published (usual caveats apply). Further, while it would likely require such a person to invest some time and effort in 'marketing' (shall we say), the chances are that it'd be published in a relevant peer-reviewed journal before too long.

(well, at least no one has made a strong case to the contrary yet).

To date, there's been relatively little discussion of why the myth that, contrariwise, 'on a par with Einstein's best' ideas would be enormously difficult to get published (in ...) seems so persistent.

 

[chronon]

I think it's been pretty well established that should any outsider develop an idea in the same class as Einstein's, they'd have no difficulty worth speaking of to get it published (usual caveats apply). Further, while it would likely require such a person to invest some time and effort in 'marketing' (shall we say), the chances are that it'd be published in a relevant peer-reviewed journal before too long.

You seem to expect that such a work will announce itself to the world as the bringer of a total revolution in physics. Such an announcement would of course set off everyone's crackpot defenses. But what Einstein was doing was to address a small, somewhat philosophical, inconsistency between electromagnetism and mechanics. Isn't it possible that a journal could have seen his work as an interesting academic exercise, but not worth publishing.

 

[Nereid]

All of this talk about Einstein, but no one has mentioned the fact that Einstein had a degree in Theoretical Physics and received his PhD in 1905, the same year he published his first paper. Someone without an education, or working on something completely outside of their formal education, bringing up Einstein as a comparison is rather silly.

Hear, hear.

And this is one place where the difference between maths and physics might show ... to make a substantial, new, contribution in physics* requires a great deal of familiarity with much of modern physics. While it is certainly possible to become sufficiently familiar without a formal degree (a PhD or a very good MSc), through self-study for example, the understanding of modern physics you'd gain would be more than enough to equip you to write a paper that would be at least worth the time of professional to review. As I understand it, it's somewhat different in mathematics.

* except, perhaps, parts of physics that almost entirely theoretical, string theory say.

 

[chronon]

All of this talk about Einstein, but no one has mentioned the fact that Einstein had a degree in Theoretical Physics and received his PhD in 1905, the same year he published his first paper. Someone without an education, or working on something completely outside of their formal education, bringing up Einstein as a comparison is rather silly.

Hear, hear.

I thought Evo's post was a total non sequitur. Who is it that doesn't have an education? The post seems to be saying that we shouldn't compare the example given in this thread, i.e. Einstein, with Einstein.

 

[heldervelez]

Publishing Against the Tide

Some transcriptions about the difficulties in publishing

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peer_review"
Criticisms of peer review
..it is slow, and that it typically takes several months or even several years in some fields for a submitted paper to appear in print. In practice, much of the communication about new results in some fields such as astronomy no longer takes place through peer-reviewed papers, but rather through preprints submitted onto electronic servers such as arXiv.org. However, such preprints are often also submitted to refereed journals, and in many cases have, at the time of electronic submission, already passed through the peer review process and been accepted for publication.
...
Allegations of bias and suppression
The interposition of editors and reviewers between authors and readers always raises the possibility that the intermediators may serve as gatekeepers. Some sociologists of science argue that peer review makes the ability to publish susceptible to control by elites and to personal jealousy.[10] The peer review process may suppress dissent against "mainstream" theories.[11][12][13] Reviewers tend to be especially critical of conclusions that contradict their own views, and lenient towards those that accord with them. At the same time, elite scientists are more likely than less established ones to be sought out as referees, particularly by high-prestige journals or publishers. As a result, it has been argued, ideas that harmonize with the elite's are more likely to see print and to appear in premier journals than are iconoclastic or revolutionary ones, which accords with Thomas Kuhn's well-known observations regarding scientific revolutions.[14]
...
For example, Albert Einstein's revolutionary "Annus Mirabilis" papers in the 1905 issue of Annalen der Physik were not peer-reviewed by anyone other than the journal's editor in chief, Max Planck (the father of quantum theory), and its co-editor, Wilhelm Wien. Although clearly peers (both won Nobel prizes in physics), a formal panel of reviewers was not sought, as is done for many scientific journals today. Established authors and editors were given more latitude in their journalistic discretion, back then. In a recent editorial in Nature, it was stated that "in journals in those days, the burden of proof was generally on the opponents rather than the proponents of new ideas."[28]

Max Planck Nobel in 1918 and Wien Nobel in 1911.

http://www.uow.edu.au/arts/sts/bmartin/pubs/08againsttide.pdf"
A Critical Review by Scientists of
How Physics and Astronomy Get Done
Martín López Corredoira &
Carlos Castro Perelman (Eds.)
188 pages (Free distribution of the electronic copy of this book is allowed.)

It is all about the difficulties in publishing 'Against the tide'
Abstract
There are many well-qualified scientists who question long-established physics theories even when paradigms are not in crisis. Challenging scientific orthodoxy is difficult because most scientists are educated and work within current paradigms and have little career incentive to examine unconventional ideas. Dissidence is a strategic site for learning about the dynamics of science. Dozens of well-qualified scientists who challenge dominant physics paradigms were contacted to determine how they try to overcome resistance to their ideas. Some such challengers obtain funding in the usual ways; others tap unconventional sources or use their own funds. For publishing, many challengers use alternative journals and attend conferences dedicated to alternative viewpoints; publishing on the web is of special importance. Only a few physics dissidents come under attack, probably because they have not achieved enough prominence to be seen as a threat. Physics could benefit from greater openness to challenges; one way to promote this is to expose students to unconventional views.

quote pag 98
why the axiom “extraordinary hypotheses require extraordinary proofs” is harmful to scientific advancement:
since the extraordinary hypotheses are, by selection effect, necessarily those we least suspect to be true, it
follows that they are the ones with the least surviving evidence4. We shall be condemned never to discover
the most extraordinary truths unless we are prepared to make exceptions to the rigorous application of the
“extraordinary proofs” criterion.
end-quote

http://www.uow.edu.au/arts/sts/bmartin/pubs/04jsesh.html" describe the whole process and the reviewers answers also.

quoting from an open access publishing site :
http://www.philica.com/tutorial.php"
"What’s the problem with academic publishing?
is full of serious problems—
* Unnecessarily lengthy review periods
* Papers rejected for trivial reasons
* Reviewers not reading work properly owing to time pressures
* Publication blocked because a reviewer is working on something similar
* Reviewers reacting unprofessionally to criticism of their work
* Tendency for reviewers to be established authors, with subsequent bias against novel ideas and methodologies
* Good reviews, followed by, “However, I’m not sure it is right for this journal — why not submit to X instead?”
...
—and even if your paper is eventually accepted, the long lag between acceptance and publishing means someone else might beat you to publication, perhaps just because they were luckier with the reviewers they happened to get.

If not immediately accepted, recasting a paper in light of reviews can put the authors in a difficult position. Disagreeing with a reviewer, no matter that they might be wrong in what they said, probably means that the work will not get published. Altering the work may mean a compromise of opinion or standards.

The option to send to a different journal more often than not means a full or partial rewrite and a significant edit to ensure adherence to the house style of the target periodical. This means more time, and more compromise. The review process begins all over again.

The process may take a month, or it may take years. One unfavourable review can be the difference between publishing and not publishing, and the ideas — often strong, thought-provoking ideas — contained in these papers are all too often relegated to the filing cabinet...
"
end-quote

 

[Ian_Brooks]

This is quite intriguing

Does formal educational backing prevent an amateur researcher from having his work recognized?

The only credible example, albeit not an extreme one, that I can think of is a Ted talk by a biologist who discovered a revolutionary idea in chemical properties of fragrances.
http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/luca_turin_on_the_science_of_scent.html

Its an incredibly interesting video and worth watching if you have 20mins to spare.

I believe if the researcher took the time and effort to seek out venues to show his work to a credible but open audience, then it may be possible. What venues these would be - I can't say really.

Talks at university's, forum discussion, discussion with peers that may have links to some academic publishing journals are a few ideas.

Other factors have to be considered, such as
i) ease of accessibility of the information
- such as is the article referenced by a popular journal
- is it in english
- if one were looking for information in that area could they easily come across the revolutionary idea proposed?
ii) How willing the academic community, or some of their members are willing to accept the idea.

 

[zoobyshoe]

For publishing, many challengers use alternative journals and attend conferences dedicated to alternative viewpoints; publishing on the web is of special importance. Only a few physics dissidents come under attack, probably because they have not achieved enough prominence to be seen as a threat. Physics could benefit from greater openness to challenges; one way to promote this is to expose students to unconventional views.

I happened to be re-reading Gleik's Chaos yesterday and was reminded of the case of Feigenbaum:

"Years later Feigenbaum still kept in a desk drawer, where he could get at them quickly, his rejection letters. By then he had all the recognition he needed. His Los Alamos work had won him prizes and awards that brought prestige and money. But it still rankled that editors of the top academic journals had deemed his work unfit for publication for two years after he had began submitting it.The notion of a scientific breakthrough so original and unexpected that it cannot be published seems a slightly tarnished myth. Modern science, with its vast flow of information and its impartial system of peer review, is not supposed to be a matter of taste. One editor who sent back a Feigenbaum manuscript recognised years later that he had rejected a paper that was a turning point for the field..."

Feigenbaum's eventual recognition had come, not from publication but as a result of his own legwork:

"The kernel of the theory was disseminated the way most science is now disseminated-through lectures and preprints. Feigenbaum described his work at conferences, and requests for photocopies of his papers came in by the scores and then by the hundred."

Chaos, pp180-181

Those last two sentences, especially, written by Gleik way back in 1987, amount to an assertion that direct approach to peer reviewed journals has been understood for quite some time to be a dead end for new ideas, and that "most science" is now disseminated by circumventing those journals.

 

[heldervelez]

I'm sure that http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grigori_Perelman" could not post at arxiv those fundamental papers that proved the Poincaré's Conjecture if by 2002/Nov the rules of publishing were the actual rules.

As he was not affiliated to an institution there was a big problem to submit to a peer-reviewed publication (usually the submition has to be paied) and he was poor.

Actually he remains poor by not accepting the Fields Medal, and most probably will not accept the Millenium Prize, if offered.

As seen, Einstein could not publish today those fundamental papers.
Not even at PF.