Re: BioTheory launch/The Barbarians?

[Judith Rosen <***>]

Whether "general science" in the title is meaningless or not (or to whom it is meaningless... or not) is one issue. But there is a misconception here:

 

> John M. wrote: The specification  (based on -) "Rosennean Complexity Paradigm" may say
> something to those who are already happily practicing converts.
> You want to get to the barbarians.

 

Actually, I don't want to get to the Barbarians--at least not with this journal. For people with truly closed minds (the definition of a Barbarian, here?) even intellectual dynamite won't open them up. I'm pretty sure a journal would be a waste of time, altogether.

 

What I'm after-- the whole reason I'm willing to take time out of my life to create this journal-- is to use my father's name to offer a venue to innovative thinkers who would otherwise be shut out of the mainstream journals for a variety of reasons. Some of the reasons good work could be rejected by a mainstream journal might include:

1.) The work itself lies outside accepted belief structures (even though it is logically and scientifically sound).

2.) The author/thinker is not "credentialed" enough.

3.) The author/thinker is not well-connected enough.

4.) The work won't attract subscribers (or in some journals; advertisers) to the publication (or might frighten away some who already buy subscription/advertising space).

 

When money and science meet, science loses. When prestige and science meet, science loses. Same for ego. Same for fame. Even a venue that began with the best of intentions will lose its soul when it becomes so well established that all those other considerations become more important to whomever is running it than the work is. If I ever sense that happening to me, I'll quit. But the fact that I'm not a scientist, that I'm doing this in my father's memory, that it isn't costing me anything but time, and it won't earn me anything, period... all are safeguards as far as I'm concerned.

 

There are several ex-students of my father's who aren't publishing their work at all, because they grew tired of the process and the crap you have to wade through, and the rewrites to obscure the facts so that no one would be offended, and the catch 22 called "peer review" and so on, ad nausaeum. I suspect the number of people with brilliant ideas but a low tolerance for crap is fairly large. Kindred spirits, all.

 

My father was of the belief that academia is no longer an advocate of innovation or of real education in many respects. I was in the trenches with him in Halifax while he fought the kind of lowest-common-denominator thinking that pervades university administrations-- It wasn't unique to Dalhousie! It was something that he had seen at every single academic institution he'd ever worked at. It's the kind of thinking that says "Lecturing 500 first-year students is a better use of professorial time than writing a book or doing research... and having three PhD students." Administrators look at the sheer numbers; 500 vs 3. Idiots!

 

Private industry is also not the place to put brilliant and innovative thinking of this type. My father had very ugly experiences with the pharmaceutical company called "Emisphere Technologies" (back then it was Clinical Technology Associates), when he invented an oral drug delivery system for non-oral medications. It's a very long, sad story but the upshot is that they have rebuilt the entire company around his invention, after shutting him out of the process completely. My father had a lot of ideas like the one that company is using, but nowhere to put them and no interest, particularly after his experiences with Emisphere, in pursuing such things. So, the ideas died with him. How often does that kind of thing happen, do you think? I tend to believe it happens all the time.

 

Another useful function of this journal that is important (to me, anyway) is this:

 

There are many aspects of my father's work that suggest avenues of approach for unanswered questions. His written work is riddled with such suggestions (where he says something along the lines of "to pursue these ideas here would take us too far outside the scope of the present work, but interested readers are free to explore..."). I want to pull things like that out of the work and put them in the journal. One of the fun things about growing up with my father as a parent was that he was constantly illuminating what science doesn't know. He pointed it out, all the time. "Nobody knows why that happens," he'd say. "Some people think ______, but others think _____. Ultimately, no one's figured it out yet." If I asked him what HE thought the explanation was, he'd tell me where his musings were or what extent he'd gotten to in wondering about it, or-- if it was something he'd never thought about before, he'd simply say he had no idea.

 

In his work, though, he almost always had a very good idea which direction the answers lay, and he gave people a sketch of a roadmap to follow. I want to publish those. They're all in his books already, but people are missing them there, for some reason.

 

So, my vision for this journal, while radically different from what he initially planned for BioTheory, will hopefully be something he would consider not only useful, but much needed in the world today.

 

Judith

----- Original Message -----

From: "John M" <***>

To: <***>

Sent: Sunday, September 05, 2004 6:58 PM

Subject: Re: [ROSEN] BioTheory launch

> Dear Judith,
> I hope this is not a broken 
record...
> "General Science" is meaningless. Does not say anthing. 
-
> The specification  (based on -) "Rosennean Complexity Paradigm" 
may say
> something to those who are already happily practicing 
converts.
> You want to get to the barbaarians.
> 
> If I try 
(unsuccessfully, I could say) to think with the mind of an
> accomplished 
reductionist biologist I would frown on "Somebody seems to come
> up with 
a new Bio-Theory? I had enough of those in the past".
> 
> The 
'scientific'  literature is out of hand. I would not go to a
> 
cardiologist who does not read cardiological literature. My specialty
> 
(really a sideline both in chemistry, polymer science, pollution 
control,
> hydrology, separation science and liquid handling t4echnology) 
had
> professional literature which was absolutely impossible to even 
glance at. I
> had excellen librarieS to help and got the 
reference-periodicals as well,
> the 25 hours a day I stole from my 
practical work and personal life for
> reading was by far not enough. 
Since I fretired the situation got worse:
> more and more 'unmissable' 
mags are coming out. Even SOME select ones
> (Nature etc.) are hard to 
keep up with.
> 
> I might positivize my stance (if it is of any 
worth) if you could list those
> topics
> which (by keywords, or 
beyond) you hope to appear in the journal. I had a
> decade once as editor 
of the "Polymers" section of the "Hungarian Chemical
> Journal":  the 
total was too "general" a title - it had to be specificised.
> 
> I 
don't want to 'strawmanize' (te 3rd such word-monster in one post) my
> 
remarks, so I leave the rest to you. (What is the 'bio-theory''?)
> 
> John M
>