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Peter Ratcliffe's Nobel Prize Winning Study Was Rejected by Journal

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Re: Peter Ratcliffe's Nobel Prize Winning Study Was Rejected by Journal

#41

Post by jjaredsimpson »

panpanna wrote: post #38
PhasmaFelis wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hindsight is 20/20, but I suspect that for every revolutionary idea that's initially dismissed as crackpot nonsense, there's a thousand dismissed ideas that actually are crackpot nonsense. It's hard to draw strong general conclusions from looking at outliers.

Sure but looking back, I can also tell you that almost all great ideas I have ever had were initially rejected. For a long time I thought this was due to poor presentation. Then one day it hit me: the reason boss/coworker doesn't get it is the same reason why he could not come up with the idea himself.

But how do you know the ideas were/are great? Rejection isn't evidence of quality.

Re: Peter Ratcliffe's Nobel Prize Winning Study Was Rejected by Journal

#42

Post by Beldin »

t_serpico wrote: post #12
chrisseaton wrote: post #4

It doesn't say it explicitly in the article, but I guess the idea behind people sharing this story is to laugh at the original reviewer's foolishness, ignorance, or arrogance for rejecting Nobel quality work. But it isn't that simple. What was the context in which the original work was presented? Does the Nobel Committee know more now than the reviewer did at the time? Maybe the original paper wasn't written well eno…

I would also add that journals like Nature or Science are aiming to publish high quality, high impact work in a manner that is highly specific (i.e they can be confident such work is high quality and high impact) and hopefully communicable to a somewhat broad audience. Ground breaking ideas out of left field may need some more time to mature before such journals would be comfortable publishing such work.

In other words, journals try to predict the future (impact) while the Nobel committee looks at the past (impact). More specifically, journals like significant advances in known fields (eg, doubling the efficiency of solar panels), while the Nobel committee likes research that opens up a new field (eg, looking for exo planets).

In that light, maybe it's more surprising to see a Nobel-awarded piece of research was published in Nature than to see it was rejected by Nature.

Re: Peter Ratcliffe's Nobel Prize Winning Study Was Rejected by Journal

#43

Post by btilly »

PhasmaFelis wrote: post #32
panpanna wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Consider this next time you have a good idea and everyone in the room very loudly questions you.

Hindsight is 20/20, but I suspect that for every revolutionary idea that's initially dismissed as crackpot nonsense, there's a thousand dismissed ideas that actually are crackpot nonsense. It's hard to draw strong general conclusions from looking at outliers.

The problem is that impossible seeming results tend to get rejected out of hand no matter how carefully they were done, or how easy to replicate.

This is an extreme example of that, and should stand as a cautionary tale that data should be believed especially when it is in conflict with theory. Rather than being rejected and ignored.

Re: Peter Ratcliffe's Nobel Prize Winning Study Was Rejected by Journal

#44

Post by markus92 »

jessriedel wrote: post #20
eecc wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> > Given the discrepancy mentioned by reviewer 1, we have sadly concluded, on balance, that your paper would be better placed in a more specialised journal, particularly given the competition for space Perhaps there's too much competition because there's not enough space? Science is not an industry notorious for excess in investment capacity...

Modern journals have no limit imposed by the process of publishing physical objects. Space is limited simply in the sense that Nature wants to maintain a reputation for publishing impressive/important results, and readers have very finite time and energy, so Nature sets a high bar for acceptance.

Nature is still published in print, and so are many others.

Re: Peter Ratcliffe's Nobel Prize Winning Study Was Rejected by Journal

#45

Post by JorgeGT »

dr_coffee wrote: post #34
btilly wrote: post #16

That's nothing. The most extreme such example is that everything that Barbara McClintock published for decades about jumping genes was questioned because it seemed like an impossible result. It got so bad that she stopped even trying to submit papers for publication anywhere after 1953. Then in the 1960s and 1970s the mechanics of transposons was discovered and she became hailed as a pioneer and was awarded the Nobel…

That is indeed an extreme example, given how matter of factly they teach transposons in molecular bio these days. When we couldn't get a paper published, my old PI would always joke, "There's always BBRC!", referring to the journal biochemical and biophysical research communications. The impact factor was and still is quite low, and it would make the post docs bristle when he said it. But I once asked him, why BBRC?…

There are many prestigious/important journals within specific fields with very low IF. For instance in acoustics the Journal of the Acoustical Society of America or Acta Acustica united with Acustica.

Re: Peter Ratcliffe's Nobel Prize Winning Study Was Rejected by Journal

#46

Post by panpanna »

jjaredsimpson wrote: post #41
panpanna wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure but looking back, I can also tell you that almost all great ideas I have ever had were initially rejected. For a long time I thought this was due to poor presentation. Then one day it hit me: the reason boss/coworker doesn't get it is the same reason why he could not come up with the idea himself.

But how do you know the ideas were/are great? Rejection isn't evidence of quality.

Well, that's a very valid question.

My point is that with time, you can look back at ideas that turned out to be great and recall how they were initially received.

Re: Peter Ratcliffe's Nobel Prize Winning Study Was Rejected by Journal

#47

Post by JorgeGT »

Alex3917 wrote: post #13
JorgeGT wrote: post #6

Nature also rejected Fermi's paper on weak interaction ("contained speculations too remote from reality to be of interest to the reader") and Kreb's paper about the citric acid cycle ("It is undesirable to accept further letters at the present time") — both investigation would end winning the Nobel.

Karl von Frisch's Nobel-winning biology paper was rejected everywhere he submitted it also.

To be fair, bees doing cute little dance moves to talk to each other does sound pretty crazy.

Re: Peter Ratcliffe's Nobel Prize Winning Study Was Rejected by Journal

#48

Post by dekhn »

What I'm trying to understand is: do large numbers of people believe the work that goes on to the Nobel Prize should be recognized as such when it is originally published?

Put another way: could you train a binary classifier (NOBEL/NOTBEL) that predicted prizewinning status at journal submission time based on the information bits available in the article? (personally I really doubt it)

Re: Peter Ratcliffe's Nobel Prize Winning Study Was Rejected by Journal

#49

Post by btilly »

southerndrift wrote: post #28

Hasn't Maxwell not mentioned Maxwell's equations when giving a speech about the state of the art of science? If a great scientist can be unsure about a theory, it's not surprising that an average reviewer can be, too.

My favorite variation was David Hilbert asking in a talk what "Hilbert Spaces" were.

In his defense, they were named after him by someone else. But it was still a funny irony.

Re: Peter Ratcliffe's Nobel Prize Winning Study Was Rejected by Journal

#50

Post by avip »

panpanna wrote: post #38
PhasmaFelis wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hindsight is 20/20, but I suspect that for every revolutionary idea that's initially dismissed as crackpot nonsense, there's a thousand dismissed ideas that actually are crackpot nonsense. It's hard to draw strong general conclusions from looking at outliers.

Sure but looking back, I can also tell you that almost all great ideas I have ever had were initially rejected. For a long time I thought this was due to poor presentation. Then one day it hit me: the reason boss/coworker doesn't get it is the same reason why he could not come up with the idea himself.

What's the rejection rate of your poor ideas?
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