"Wirt Atmar"  wrote
>
> >If no one has put forward the idea that tumours may evolve into organs I
> >here by stake my claim to this theory ;-). What we need is some sort of
> >central registry of evolutionary theories. While we're at it  another
> >registry for theories of sex.
>
> Mendel's work appeared in a little-read Swiss agricultural journal, but it
was
> published. When his theories and genetical phenomena were independently
> rediscovered at the end of the century, and it was found that he had
> published the same work 40 years earlier, all credit was given to Mendel.
>
Though Patrick Matthew developed the theory of evolution by natural
selection (On Naval Timber and Aboriculture, Matthew, 1831) a good time
before Darwin. Most students doing biology degrees have heard of him in
passing, but the name is not familiar to the general public.
>
> Similarly but obversely, if a theory is never published, it is given
little or
> no weight. Talk and usenet groups are cheap. They simply don't count,
>
I think that if you posted an important new theory to this ng, that would be
sufficient to establish priority.
>
> Unfortunately, publishing in peer-reviewed literature is a difficult task,
if
> for no other reason than to be published, you have to back up your ideas
> with demonstrable proof that they could at least be true.
>
It is not uncommon for a discovery to start with a wild idea, but very few
ideas are so brilliant that their truth and importance is obvious for all to
see. It may be that tumours can evolve from organs (and certainly at some
point animals must have gone from a model with a defined number of cells,
like C elegans, to a body plan with variable cells). You would have to put a
lot of work in to see if cancer was a factor in this step.

Peer reviewing is a return to the idea of arguing from authority. As a rule,
authority is right. Unfortunately, in the US lawyers have begun to allow
educators to exclude creationism from schools on the grounds that it is not
scientific, because they cannot get their works published in the
peer-reviewed literature. Creationists might not be able to get work past
peer reviews because it is not scientific, but their work is not
unscientific because it is rejected. Your typical lawyer or politician
cannot be expected to make this distinction, but it is crucial.

The economics of journals is all wrong. If you need to access the
peer-reviewed literature you will know what a frustrating experience it can
be. Even if your institution has a licence to see the copies, instead of
being freely published and cross-linked on the web (what the web was
designed for) the information is locked away behind menu screens, there is a
huge amount of link chasing, and frequently at the end of the chase the full
text is not available. If people got into the habit of publishing here then
it would solve many problems, but then there would be no quality control
(except from our esteemed moderator).
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