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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

#51

Post by mattkrause »

dekhn wrote: post #48

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)

That's a tough questions.

When you put it like that, no, obviously not, or at least not always.

On the other hand, a lot of academia is predicated on the idea that the quality and impact of research and by extension, the researcher, is immediately apparent, so we're "correctly" selecting and rewarding the best people. Stuff like this suggests that we're not, and the moves towards relentless up-or-out pipelines (with fixed times at each stage) might be counterproductive.

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

#52

Post by mamon »

JorgeGT wrote: post #47
Alex3917 wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It wouldn't sound that crazy if Nobel Commitee members watched more musicals :)

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

#53

Post by gamblor956 »

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.

A lot of truly terrible ideas are also initially rejected.

Rejection is not an indicator for the merit of an idea.

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

#54

Post by cauthon »

btilly wrote: post #43
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.

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.

> 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.

This is a terrible sentiment and it needs to stop spreading with these articles about Nobel rejections.

Noticing that your data is in conflict with theory is the best way of realizing that you have made a mistake. Go back to your analysis and work through it until you realize what you did wrong. If you can't find the mistake, then share it with your colleagues/PI, and get them to tell you what you did wrong. If all of their ideas don't explain your result, then you may have found an interesting finding, but you should probably triple check your work and then try to reproduce the finding in new data.

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

#55

Post by dekhn »

mattkrause wrote: post #51
dekhn wrote: post #48

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)

That's a tough questions. When you put it like that, no, obviously not, or at least not always. On the other hand, a lot of academia is predicated on the idea that the quality and impact of research and by extension, the researcher, is immediately apparent, so we're "correctly" selecting and rewarding the best people. Stuff like this suggests that we're not, and the moves towards relentless up-or-out pipelines (with…

I think there are many things that, when published in the context of the day, are not distinguishable from other work in terms of "Nobelity". It seems like most impact is measured decades after an initial technology is discovered, reported, and published. CRISPR seems like a relative outlier (once the basic technique was perfected, it went from "nothing" to "everything" in just a few years, and has now completely changed the nature of biomedical research).

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

#56

Post by btilly »

cauthon wrote: post #54
btilly wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> 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. This is a terrible sentiment and it needs to stop spreading with these articles about Nobel rejections. Noticing that your data is in conflict with theory is the best way of realizing that you have made a mistake. Go back to you…

It is true that most impossible results are experimental error of one sort or another.

But it is a systemic failure that biologists broadly rejected a result out of hand that had been successfully replicated many times, at multiple labs, over decades. And the attitude that you describe is part of why it happened.

Data that does not fit in existing paradigms should be scrutinized with extra care, not rejected out of hand.

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

#57

Post by jessriedel »

markus92 wrote: post #44
jessriedel wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yes I know, but the size is not meaningfully constrained by the physical cost of producing or transporting the magazine. The scarce resource is the readers attention. There may also be value in creating artificial scarcity, given that they have something like a status monopoly.

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

#58

Post by jacques_chester »

panpanna wrote: post #30
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…

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

> But the fact that some geniuses were laughed at does not imply that all who are laughed at are geniuses. They laughed at Columbus, they laughed at Fulton, they laughed at the Wright Brothers. But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown.

Carl Sagan.

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

#60

Post by mantap »

gamblor956 wrote: post #53
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.

A lot of truly terrible ideas are also initially rejected. Rejection is not an indicator for the merit of an idea.

The point is the contrapositive: if your idea is not initially rejected, it's probably quite pedestrian.
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