Rejecting and resisting Nobel class discoveries: accounts by Nobel Laureates

“Excellence R Us”: university research and the fetishisation of excellence

“…These suggest a bias towards conformance and social connectedness over innovation in funding decisions in a world in which success rates are as low as 10%. It also provides further evidence of funding-agency bias against disruptively innovative work noted by many researchers over the years (Kuhn [1962] 2012; Campanario, 1993Campanario, , 1995Campanario, , 1996Campanario, , 2009Costello, 2010;Ioannidis et al, 2014;Siler et al, 2015).…”

“…This is true even of work that can be shown to be successful by other measures. Campanario, Gans and Shepherd, and others, for example, have traced the rejection histories of Nobel and other prize winners, including for papers reporting on results for which they later won their recognition (Gans and Shepherd, 1994;Campanario, 2009;Azoulay et al, 2011: 527-528). Campanario and others have also reported on the initial rejection of papers that later went on to become among the more highly cited in their fields or in the journals that ultimately accepted them (Campanario, 1993(Campanario, , 1996Campanario, 1995;Campanario and Acedo, 2007;Calcagno et al, 2012;Nicholson and Ioannidis, 2012;Siler et al, 2015).…”

“…The rejection of papers that are subsequently published with little or no revision at journals of similar rank increases the costs for everyone involved without any countervailing improvement in quality. In addition to multiplying the systemic cost of refereeing and editorial management by the number of resubmissions, such articles also present an opportunity cost to their authors through lost chances to claim priority for discoveries, for example, or, even more commonly, lost opportunities for citation and influence (Gans and Shepherd, 1994;Campanario, 2009;Şekercioğlu, 2013;Brembs, 2015;Psych Filedrawer, 2016).…”

On the peer review process in scientific publication

“…Nitekim, çok saygın bilim dergilerinde bile etik ihlaller ile karşılaşılabilmektedir. Altman ile birlikte Nobel Kimya Ödülü'ne değer görü-len Cech'in RNA moleküllerinin katalitik aktivite gös-termesine ilişkin makalesinin Nature'ün 3 hakemi tarafından da kıyasıya eleştirilmesi; 1993 Nobel Kimya Ödülü'nü hak den Mullis'in makalesinin Nature ve Science tarafından reddedilmesi gibi… Belki de Planc'ın belirttiği gibi, "Yeni bir bilimsel gerçek başlangıçta karşıtlarını ikna edemez, gerçek ancak karşıtları gidip yeni kuşak bilimciler gelince anlaşılır" (8).…”

Where the Future is Being Made Today

“…Appreciating this point, one can, however, argue that if published evidence is hidden behind a subscription wall, the paper can be easily overlooked if the full text is, for the sake of an argument, not readily accessible to search engines (Campanario, 2009). Credence for this notion that overlooked sources may contribute to an incomplete referencing of state of the art is provided by Sawin and Robinson (2016).…”