Thread: Publishing Scientific Theories

This isn't a scientific theory, exactly. It's a question, but I still think this is the right forum to ask it:

If you come up with a theory that departs in some way from previous thinking, and has sufficient support to be credible (maybe even enough to prove it), how is the best way to go about publicizing it?

Are there any scientific journals that like to print that sort of thing? From what I can tell, most journals focus on publishing experimental results from laboratory science, and take a lot less interest in theoretical pursuits. Maybe I'm just looking at the wrong ones?

Is it better to just set up a web site and self publish?

Well there are journals such as Medical Hypotheses and Bioscience Hypotheses which publish notable new ideas rather than experimental work. They're both published by Elsevier which is a plus and they both have a modest impact factor above 1.0 (or at least Medical Hypotheses does). Submissions are subject to editorial decision based on the significance and strength of the work, but neither is peer-reviewed, which is a mark against them. Still better than a blog though. A blog of one's theories smacks a little bit of fringe scientist, pseudoscientist or just someone as mad as a box full of bees and cats.

kojax
I don't know how others do it but I know how I did it. Go into a search engine and look up every University you can find. Also look up every government org. that deals with the branch of science your theory is connected to. Then write a very polite letter to one of them asking if they could spare time to look at your theory. Copy the letter and send it to every institution on your list but change the name for each institution. It doesn't matter if they agree with your theory or not. All that matters is you will have official conformation in case your theory turns out to be valid. If anyone else tries to claim credit for your theory, they will be shot down by these institutions.
In this day of 911, these places keep all incoming and outgoing mail for up to 10 years. Your theory will be safe.
Amy

Originally Posted by Amy Smith

kojax
I don't know how others do it but I know how I did it. Go into a search engine and look up every University you can find. Also look up every government org. that deals with the branch of science your theory is connected to. Then write a very polite letter to one of them asking if they could spare time to look at your theory. Copy the letter and send it to every institution on your list but change the name for each institution. It doesn't matter if they agree with your theory or not. All that matters is you will have official conformation in case your theory turns out to be valid. If anyone else tries to claim credit for your theory, they will be shot down by these institutions.
In this day of 911, these places keep all incoming and outgoing mail for up to 10 years. Your theory will be safe.
Amy

Safe from what? having your Nobel prize pinched? Nobody has ever gone down in history for an proposing an hypothesis. This business of jealously guarding one's every brain fart as if it might equal fame, money or credit some day is bogus. Odds are good that if a scientific idea has occurred to you, there's already someone who has thought of it. And unless you're willing to do the math or make the observations to support the idea, it's not worth a damn to you regardless of where you publish it. You get credit for demonstrating things, not for making claims or suggestions.

And I seriously doubt that the offices of your average university will store unsolicited or irrelevant incoming mail for any amount of time, let alone 10 years. Your mail will be binned. Nor will they leap to the defence of some random person making the irrelevant claim that they thought of some clever idea first. Lots of people thought of it, it's the person who made it work that matters.

I don't know about other universities, but at mine, if you sent this great theory to my department, there would be about a .03 % chance of it being read by anyone other than a secretary, who, after ascertaining that it isn't legitimate business, would toss it in the shredder.

Originally Posted by kojax

This isn't a scientific theory, exactly. It's a question, but I still think this is the right forum to ask it:

If you come up with a theory that departs in some way from previous thinking, and has sufficient support to be credible (maybe even enough to prove it), how is the best way to go about publicizing it?

Are there any scientific journals that like to print that sort of thing? From what I can tell, most journals focus on publishing experimental results from laboratory science, and take a lot less interest in theoretical pursuits. Maybe I'm just looking at the wrong ones?

Is it better to just set up a web site and self publish?

Write up the manuscript and send it to a peer-reviewed journal.

Like everybody else.

or are you special?

There are rare particles such as electron,neutrons etc. that form every intellectual organism in universe.
They form each organism different in different way,they’re placed in different places and those particles are intermatterous (which means that they can exist in every kind of matter,in every kind of unknown matters).Those are particles that would form an intellectual organism on other dimensions that are different from ours and impossible to travel in for one main reason-They’re formed with the kind of matter that we can not understand and acknowledge because elemental particles that form them are different from ours and simple can’t understand them.And those intermatterous particles are the only that would make it possible for an intellectual life to exist in other dimensions and remain as close as possible to their form in ours.