Have you felt that your genuine ideas are being turned down at some level or the other during the process of conception to Intellectual Property creation?
Ever felt that an idea of yours had the capability of redefining the market but was still measured against the existing market! Ever felt that the Business Review Process applied to your technical innovation falls miserably short to assess the potential of your idea?
Well don’t feel lonely as a recent study shows what would have been the fate of the major discoveries of all times if they were “subjected to the type of reviewing process to which psychologists are forced to submit their manuscripts. In some ways, behavioural scientists are too critical, and in other ways they are insufficiently so.”
I find the following very interesting from the list of papers Trafimow and Rice believed would have been rejected. Newton's Laws of Motion and Einstein's Special Theory of Relativity. Mr. Einstein would have been told that “At best, your theory provides an incremental contribution, which is not sufficiently strong to justify publication in a journal as competitive as ours.” and as far as Mr. Newton was concerned,following would have been the reply
“
Dear Isaac,
I had the good luck to obtain reviews from four experts and all within the relatively quick period of 3 months. Although there were some positive comments, the general consensus was negative. Reviewer A felt that your theory was too abstract and mathematical to be of interest to scientists who are interested in the real universe. In comparison with other, similar theories, even as far back as those from the ancient Greeks, your theory does not have the descriptive richness that is required. Reviewer B also complained about this, but is more willing to tolerate it if you could back it up with data. But, in fact, you do not do so. Therefore, Reviewer B considers your theory to be nothing but an ingenious story.
Reviewer C made the most serious criticism. This reviewer points out that you fail to provide independent definitions of your terms. What is mass? What is force? What is acceleration? Reviewer C acknowledges that you can define each of these in terms of the others, but that merely makes your theory circular. To avoid the circularity, at least one of these terms has to be defined independently of the others, and you fail to do so. Consequently, there is no way to know what your theory actually means. Perhaps if your theory included more descriptive richness, as Reviewer A recommends, it would help with Reviewer C's problem.
Reviewer D also pointed out a serious shortcoming. According to this reviewer, your laws merely summarize what others, such as Galileo and Kepler have found, without actually adding anything new to the literature. In fact, your first law is a restatement of Galileo, and your other laws do not really tell us anything new. For example, Kepler's laws explain the orbits of the planets, and Reviewer D states quite frankly that there is simply no need for your manuscript. After my own independent reading of your manuscript, I agree with the reviewers' criticisms. Therefore, I am declining to publish your manuscript. I am sorry to have had to be the bearer of bad news, but I trust that you will find the reviewers' comments useful if you decide to submit your manuscript to another journal. Thank you for considering our journal as an outlet for your research.
DECISION: Reject
”
To conclude it might not be very cheerful to have one’s idea analyzed & perhaps criticized.May be next time the key stake holders of the business should think twice before turning down the idea of a mere developer.Who knows they by their very act of rejection is setting the mankind ten years behind.
Do read the full paper here.
Photo Courtesy: Posted By smlp.co.uk and issued under the license detailed here
Special thanks to the wonderful posts from “The British Psychological Society’s Research Digest Blog” for the conception of this article
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