The Editor as Mover or Retarder of Scientific Ideas

Abstract

The conscientious editor of a scientific publication is — or at any rate should be -- haunted by two fears: denying the dignity of print to an article which, however heretical at first blush, subsequently proves to have come nearer the truth than the reigning orthodoxy which it challenges; and -- the reverse side of the coin -- publishing unscientific rubbish, pseudo-science masquerading as the real thing behind a cloak of neatly tabulated “data”, trailing fringes of footnotes, ibids. and op.cits. Happy the editor who can truthfully assert that he has always been able to avoid that Scylla and that Charybdis!