
Scientific Papers That Were Rejected Before Going on to Win a Nobel Prize (2016) - ZeljkoS
https://www.sciencealert.com/these-8-papers-were-rejected-before-going-on-to-win-the-nobel-prize
======
dagw
Going through the reasons for these rejections, most seem perfectly
reasonable, and few are complete rejections.

One was rejected simply because that journal had too large a backlog to handle
new submissions. One journal didn't like the authors title and published it
after the author agreed to change the title. There are a couple of cases where
a journal said the topic wasn't really relevant to their journal, and the work
then went on to get published in more relevant journal. In one case they said
we like your work and think you're on to something, but your conclusion is too
strongly worded given the data you presented.

In no case did the journal or reviewer state that they thought the paper or
research was straight up wrong.

~~~
cwingrav
Very true. I think many that are not in the scientific community do not
understand that almost all papers in top journals are given "revise and
resubmit" status, so people can fix small to large issues before being
reviewed again. This process makes the paper more understandable, not just to
the reviewers, but to the community at large. It is not a perfect process, but
definitely one that has improved writings as a whole.

~~~
etrautmann
I’ve never heard of a paper that was accepted without revisions after peer
review. There’s always _some_ (thoigh frequently many) requested changes, but
never once have I seen three reviewers all sign off without having a single
suggestion.

~~~
ghaff
It seems almost inherent to the process. I don't read or write journal
articles. But I'm sometimes asked to be a reviewer on a book proposal and I
fairly frequently review docs of various types at work.

If I'm just one peripheral person on a long list I might read quickly through
and say "Looks fine to me." But if I'm really reviewing something, I almost
feel that I'm expected to at least find some nit-picks--as well as anything
really substantial of course. It's pretty rare that I will be "No comments" on
a first-pass review.

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jihadjihad
One they missed was Barry Marshall and Robin Warren's research on a bacterial
cause of peptic ulcers [0]. Their paper was rejected from the
Gastroenterological Society of Australia, who "rated it in the bottom 10% of
those they received in 1983." They both became Nobel laureates in 2005.

[0]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barry_Marshall](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barry_Marshall)

------
QuesnayJr
Do physicists really consider the editor saying "change the title" a
rejection? If the only request I got from an editor was "change the title" I
would be popping the champagne.

~~~
magicalhippo
From what I gather there are essentially four outcomes to the review:
accepted, accepted after minor modifications, rejected pending resubmission
after substantial modifications, fully rejected.

Minor modifications shouldn't require a new full review cycle, maybe just the
editor takes a look, or just some quick check with reviewer to see if they
accept the change.

Rejecting pending resubmission is for larger changes which require a more
thorough review, but the journal is still interested in publishing the paper.
This might be a section that requires more explanation, for example more
details on how samples were controlled for other factors.

Also as mentioned a full rejection doesn't automatically mean the paper is
rubbish, it could just be the journal doesn't consider it a good fit or
similar. It's not uncommon for a paper to go through multiple rejections
before getting published.

At least that's my understanding based on a close friend who publishes papers,
feel free to correct me.

~~~
phalangion
You've pretty much got it, but a paper receiving either of the "accept"
outcomes in the first round is extremely rare. I know of zero. Your third,
"rejected pending resubmission after modifications" is the normal path for
papers that go on to be accepted. Often this is called a "revise and resubmit"
or R&R.

------
mensetmanusman
As a materials scientist I have to vote for quasicrystals. On top of not
receiving the Nobel prize, Dan Shechtman had to observe and decrypt the
meaning of diffraction patterns that were so strange people thought his
machine was malfunctioning.

Humans have no known way of producing quasicrystals in bulk, but amazingly we
have found that meteorites (e.g. the Khatyrka) can have them. Something about
traveling through deep space for millions of years...

Quasicrystals can be modeled as crystals in the N+1’th dimension.

Princeton mathematicians recently simulated a 1D crystal where the location of
the atoms on the 1D grid was set to the first few tens of millions of prime
numbers. The resulting diffraction pattern was quasi-crystalline...

~~~
ablekh
Sorry for the off-topic note, but I would appreciate if you could comment on
my recent poll here
([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21187659](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21187659))
and, if you know other MSE people on HN, please ping them, if possible. Thank
you very much in advance!

------
webel0
Good article but it seems to be copied near-verbatim from [1]. There is a tiny
“H/T” at the bottom of the article.

Suggest that the link point to the original source.

[1]
[https://www.authorea.com/users/8850/articles/117724-nope-8-r...](https://www.authorea.com/users/8850/articles/117724-nope-8-rejected-
papers-that-won-the-nobel-prize)

------
tiemand
This reminds me of something I recently saw on Netflix. In the documentary
about physicist Abdus Salam, he sent Wolfgang Pauli a paper on parity
violations. Pauli replied saying something like "find something better to do".

Later, two Chinese physicist went on to get the Nobel Prize for that same
theory. Pauli later apologised.

[https://www.sps.ch/en/articles/milestones-in-physics/the-
fal...](https://www.sps.ch/en/articles/milestones-in-physics/the-fall-of-
parity-2/)

[https://www.netflix.com/gb/title/81191195](https://www.netflix.com/gb/title/81191195)

------
Atlas00
I remember hearing that the original graphene paper was initially declined by
Nature because the reviewers claimed that isolating a 2D material was
impossible. I feel that's a more firm rejection than many of those listed
here.

------
glofish
As framed above the story is little more than make-you-feel-good if you get
rejection. The data makes sense only in the following contexts:

    
    
      - How many accepted papers did win the Nobel Prize?
      - How many rejected papers did not win the Nobel prize?
      - How many rejected papers are utter batshit nonsense?
    

Other way to say it, what is the likelihood that a rejected paper is Nobel
prize-worthy? ...

~~~
ncmncm
I read it as being about the incompetence of reviewers. Considering the dreck
that does get published, rejecting Nobel-level work should be an enduring
disgrace.

Edit: had forgotten about submission fees. Yes, those were real. $100 was a
lot more then, particularly for a grad student. Competion from open-access
journals has been so good that people are forgetting how terrible it was. But
paywall journals are still very, very bad. IMO it is irresponsible to use one.

------
evanb
> You might not have heard much about NMR spectroscopy, but it's responsible
> for revealing details about the structure and dynamics of molecules -
> something that's incredibly handy for chemists and biochemists.

Also it's the technology driving magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). Leaving out
'nuclear' was just a marketing tactic to keep people from being afraid.

~~~
ncmncm
Yes, this comment floored me. Did they really not know that MRI used NMR?

I got to do an NMR experiment as an undergrad, a decade before MRI, and it
seemed miraculous then. I remember reading a speculation that a 3D imaging
machine ought to be possible (in IEEE Spectrum, back when it was often ground-
breaking), and was astounded when five years later they had done it and were
selling them. Still haven't had a scan, yet.

------
kratom_sandwich
For those who are interested in a similar article for economics, I can
recommend this one from the Journal of Economic Perspectives, which is freely
available online:

[https://pubs.aeaweb.org/doi/pdfplus/10.1257/jep.8.1.165](https://pubs.aeaweb.org/doi/pdfplus/10.1257/jep.8.1.165)
(PDF)

------
dekhn
To be honest, if I was a reviewer, and somebody sent the first NMR paper to
me, I'd reject it. It was a truly crazy idea that came out of war tech. Even
when I did NMR in the 90s, it was still pretty crazy: you have a supercooled
superconducting magnet and put a sample into a spinning buffer of air, then
bombard it with radiowaves and listen for the echo. The echo, if carefully
deconvolved, provides unbelievably fine details on the electrically shielded
nuclear environment.

Did I mention it was a 23T superconducting supercooled magnet, where you
inject charge (electrons) and they swirl around without neglible resistance
for months at a time?

~~~
jchallis
23T is a big magnet. Were you at the high field lab in Tallahassee?

~~~
dekhn
Ah, no, I was just quoting the field strength of what used to be the largest
magnet. Personally I used a 600MHz. It's still weird to have your head below a
massive magnet and have to tune analog electronics for impedence matching
because there aren't any shielding techs for digital electronics that can
survive the field strength.

------
kyberias
If a scientific paper that may result in winning a Nobel prize never gets
rejected, the criteria for acceptance is too lenient.

If a scientific paper that contains rubbish never gets accepted, the criteria
for acceptance is too strict.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
How about, just shoddy? Don't need to assume perfect reviewers, just
confused/ignorant/bad ones.

------
shatnersbassoon
Bear in mind that a lot of papers are initially rejected by journals simply
because the journals want another $99 submission fee.

~~~
sideshowb
Wow is that a thing? I have submitted to many journals and none wanted fees
before acceptance.

~~~
dagw
There is whole cottage industry of journals that will publish basically
anything in exchange for a submission fee, being kept alive by desperate PhD
students who need a couple of more papers published so they can just get their
degree and get out of there.

~~~
shatnersbassoon
When it happened to me it was a "reputable" high-impact neuroscience journal,
not Cross-stitch Monthly.

~~~
dagw
Was it for open access? Lots of journals charge a fee if you want to make your
paper generally available.

~~~
sideshowb
Yes, but they charge after acceptance, not before.

------
rurban
That's the problem when hiring reviewers straight from Wikipedia or
Stackoverflow. The horizon is very low then.

------
manjana
Are sensationalistic science sites allowed?

