Re:Lead poisoning probably did not cause the downfall of the...
by namaria on Monday June 13, 2022 @06:07PM
(#31732395)
You don't attack established authors and frameworks. The low hanging fruit I was referencing is choosing something easy to disprove such as "eggs kill" or "roman empire fell because lead poisoning". After these results are published, the process is reversed. You disprove "eggs don't kill" or "lead poisoning had no bearing on the fall of roman empire". Ad infinitum.
Re:Lead poisoning probably did not cause the downfall of the...
by BurningFrog on Monday June 13, 2022 @07:13PM
(#31732904)
Is this because those other authors are the "peers" that get to peer review the paper?
A much better approximation to the truth would be something like this:
How not to get published: "Other authors are wrong."
How to get published: "These specific other authors are right, and I have built upon the solid foundation laid by their brilliant work to do this other thing that may or may not have any actual utility or be of interest to anyone."
[UPDATE] I actually did once publish a paper [1] that explicitly described (some of) the reasons that one of the then-leading theories in my field was wrong and how I thought it could be improved. It was more or less the beginning of the end of my career. I don't know if there was any causal relationship between these two events, but there was definitely a temporal one.
And now that I reflect upon it, it wasn't even me who pointed out the problem, I was actually just citing Ralph Hartley who had pointed out the problems seven years earlier. He was, AFAICT, never heard from again either.
[1] https://www.coursehero.com/file/60834776/tlapdf/