# If you discover some new scientific or math thing, who are you supposed to contact? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [July 29, 2021, 3:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-you-discover-some-new-scientific-or-math-thing-who-are-you-supposed-to-contact/947589 "2021-07-29T15:12:34Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![DPRK](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/4491bb/32.png) [@DPRK](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DPRK)\ **Post date:** [July 29, 2021, 11:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-you-discover-some-new-scientific-or-math-thing-who-are-you-supposed-to-contact/947589/21 "2021-07-29T23:12:21Z")
I don’t know “whom you should contact”, presumably whatever people are interested in the problem, but I know what you definitely should do: Well, first of all, to save yourself from embarrassment, better make sure your work is correct, if that does not go without saying. Step 2, post your pre-print on the arXiv. That’s it! Later you can submit it to some prestigious journal. P.S. I guess that if you are an “amateur” then you are less likely to “stumble” across some huge scientific discovery, or obtain the grant to fund that research in the first place, but that is not really what we are discussing. > [@Hari\_Seldon](#): > > Ramanujan wrote to G.H. Hardy and his work (a body of work, not a single result) got him an invitation to Cambridge. That is the difference between the 20th century and today: you can post your work on the Internet and a bunch of people will see it, not merely at Cambridge and not merely one guy. On the flip side, in real life plenty of people can and do post plenty of crap but for the purposes of this discussion I am assuming that you post not-crap, and that works to your advantage because there will be a record of your monograph or pre-print and the date it was posted. ---
**Author:** ![Hatchie](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hatchie/32/3983_2.png) [@Hatchie](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hatchie)\ **Post date:** [July 30, 2021, 3:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-you-discover-some-new-scientific-or-math-thing-who-are-you-supposed-to-contact/947589/22 "2021-07-30T03:14:08Z")
> [@Voyager](#): > > Nobody’s getting a Nobel Prize without publication. You said it! “Publish or perish!”, that’s the watchword. [![](https://i.postimg.cc/bwDY218S/BFDE5-A38-F477-4-DA2-A82-D-D75695686-E4-F.jpg) ](https://i.postimg.cc/bwDY218S/BFDE5-A38-F477-4-DA2-A82-D-D75695686-E4-F.jpg) Well that _ **used** _ to be the watchword, but I always had to wonder how you could publish if a giant squid was about to kill you; in that case I guess it should be “Get the hell out, then publish”! I think Tom Swift Jr. had the right idea, by putting a real eye-catching jacket on his book. That’s how you catch the attention of the Academy of Scientists, otherwise we would never have heard of the Jetmarine. But where do great ideas come from? I remember a few years ago, a lady from Holland (I think it was) joined a group where they gave you a lot of pictures from a Giant telescope to look at, and she spotted some weird galaxy or something out in Deep Space; now I don’t want to diminish her achievement but I bet she got a pat on the head for that while the Nobel Prize plus all the endorsement money went to some guy in his Astronomy Lab who just sat back waiting for someone in Rotterdam to do the hard part. I would definitely avoid that, for a start! There are better options out there, like Shark Tank just to name one. Get a Grant, then you can go ahead and invent something, _ **then** _ publish! And be sure to thank me in the Dedication. That’s a bit of “free advice”! (I normally don’t go around handing out valuable tips like this, but “the first one’s free”, that’s my motto.) ---
**Author:** ![Francis\_Vaughan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/francis_vaughan/32/3093_2.png) [@Francis\_Vaughan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Francis_Vaughan)\ **Post date:** [July 30, 2021, 6:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-you-discover-some-new-scientific-or-math-thing-who-are-you-supposed-to-contact/947589/23 "2021-07-30T06:53:28Z")
> [@Hatchie](#): > > but I bet she got a pat on the head for that while the Nobel Prize plus all the endorsement money went to some guy [Jocelyn\_Bell\_Burnell](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jocelyn_Bell_Burnell) perhaps? ---
**Author:** ![Hatchie](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hatchie/32/3983_2.png) [@Hatchie](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hatchie)\ **Post date:** [July 30, 2021, 7:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-you-discover-some-new-scientific-or-math-thing-who-are-you-supposed-to-contact/947589/24 "2021-07-30T07:36:32Z")
No! Not her. It was more recent than that. It was someone like a regular person who signed up for a group, all volunteers, and they took a big photograph of the Universe and cut into small squares and handed them out. What this woman had to do was look for anything odd in her square. And what she found was a real anomaly! ---
**Author:** ![Dr.Strangelove](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dr.strangelove/32/6613_2.png) [@Dr.Strangelove](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dr.Strangelove)\ **Post date:** [July 30, 2021, 8:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-you-discover-some-new-scientific-or-math-thing-who-are-you-supposed-to-contact/947589/25 "2021-07-30T08:53:21Z")
> [@Hatchie](#): > > And what she found was a real anomaly! There are really quite a lot of these. Usually called crowdsourced science or citizen science. Wikipedia has a big list, with a few dozen astronomy ones: > **[List of citizen science projects](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_citizen_science_projects)** > > Citizen science projects are activities sponsored by a wide variety of organizations so non-scientists can meaningfully contribute to scientific research. Activities vary widely from transcribing old ship logbooks to digitize the data as part of the Old Weather project to observing and counting birds at home or in the field for eBird. Participation can be as simple as playing a computer game for a project called Eyewire that may help scientists learn more about retinal neurons. It can a This lis... Exoplanets, gravitational lensing, variable stars, galaxy classification, and so on. ---
**Author:** ![Francis\_Vaughan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/francis_vaughan/32/3093_2.png) [@Francis\_Vaughan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Francis_Vaughan)\ **Post date:** [July 30, 2021, 12:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-you-discover-some-new-scientific-or-math-thing-who-are-you-supposed-to-contact/947589/26 "2021-07-30T12:08:14Z")
> [@Hatchie](#): > > No! Not her. No, I knew that. I was just pointing out that there are true egregious omissions in science. Jocelyn wasn’t just a volunteer pair of eyes. There is a lot to the opinion that had she been male she would have got the trip to Stockholm. She gave a talk at my university back when I was an undergraduate. She was very gracious about the whole thing when asked. The danger with showing your work to your local academic is that there are unscrupulous ones who will simply publish your work under their name. There are some terrible stories out there. Everyone in the game has a story and knows of someone who behaves badly. Usual things are grad students who have been cut out of publication credits on their work by their supervisors, or find other names magically appear on papers as their supervisor returns favours to his mates. But it can be worse than that. @DPRK is dead right when he says publish on arXiv first. Once you do that go looking for advice or collaboration. But get your stake in the ground before you do anything else. I wish I didn’t need to write the above, but that is reality. ---
**Author:** ![Hatchie](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hatchie/32/3983_2.png) [@Hatchie](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hatchie)\ **Post date:** [July 30, 2021, 3:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-you-discover-some-new-scientific-or-math-thing-who-are-you-supposed-to-contact/947589/27 "2021-07-30T15:15:53Z")
I know, remember Nikolai Ivanovich Lobachevsky! That was a bad one. And the Swede’s ears promptly fell off. [![](https://img.youtube.com/vi/gXlfXirQF3A/hqdefault.jpg "Tom Lehrer - Lobachevsky (with lyrics) '1953") ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gXlfXirQF3A) ---
**Author:** ![Darren\_Garrison](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/darren_garrison/32/92_2.png) [@Darren\_Garrison](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darren_Garrison)\ **Post date:** [July 30, 2021, 4:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-you-discover-some-new-scientific-or-math-thing-who-are-you-supposed-to-contact/947589/28 "2021-07-30T16:16:36Z")
> [@Hatchie](#): > > It was more recent than that. It was someone like a regular person who signed up for a group, all volunteers, and they took a big photograph of the Universe and cut into small squares and handed them out. > > What this woman had to do was look for anything odd in her square. And what she found was a real anomaly! This? > **[Crowdsourcing the Universe: How Citizen Scientists are Driving Discovery...](https://www.space.com/31626-crowdsourced-astronomy-finding-faint-galaxies-in-deep-space.html)** > > Like enormous magnifying glasses in deep space, gravitational lenses reveal galaxies too faint for traditional telescope techniques to detect, and many of those discoveries are being made by citizen scientists. ---
**Author:** ![Topologist](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/topologist/32/3208_2.png) [@Topologist](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Topologist)\ **Post date:** [July 30, 2021, 7:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-you-discover-some-new-scientific-or-math-thing-who-are-you-supposed-to-contact/947589/29 "2021-07-30T19:31:15Z")
> [@DPRK](#): > > Step 2, post your pre-print on the arXiv. That’s it! Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on your viewpoint), it isn’t quite that simple. The arXiv doesn’t allow just anyone to post a preprint, you need to either be recognizably an academic (e.g., have an academic email address) or get an [endorsement](https://arxiv.org/help/endorsement) from someone already approved to post. There are other preprint sites without such requirements, but they don’t have the reputation of the arXiv. So you may be back to contacting a local academic first. ---
**Author:** ![Hari\_Seldon](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hari_seldon/32/5173_2.png) [@Hari\_Seldon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hari_Seldon)\ **Post date:** [July 30, 2021, 8:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-you-discover-some-new-scientific-or-math-thing-who-are-you-supposed-to-contact/947589/30 "2021-07-30T20:39:12Z")
The n=4 case is a complete triviality, while n=3 is definitely not. I think the proof I once saw depends on knowing that Q[\sqrt {-3}] has unique factorization. I doubt that Fermat could have visualized such an argument on the spot. Anyway, we will not likely ever know. ---
**Author:** ![DPRK](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/4491bb/32.png) [@DPRK](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DPRK)\ **Post date:** [July 30, 2021, 9:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-you-discover-some-new-scientific-or-math-thing-who-are-you-supposed-to-contact/947589/31 "2021-07-30T21:00:19Z")
> [@Darren\_Garrison](#): > > > [@Hatchie](#): > > > > No! Not her. > > > > > It was more recent than that. It was someone like a regular person who signed up for a group, all volunteers, and they took a big photograph of the Universe and cut into small squares and handed them out. > > > > > > What this woman had to do was look for anything odd in her square. And what she found was a real anomaly! > > This? I think many of us remember the [Galaxy Zoo](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galaxy_Zoo), which employed human volunteers to classify galaxies, but I do not remember any scandalous scandals associated with it (it basically just asked people to click somewhere according to whether they were seeing an ellipse, or spiral, etc.)— that would be interesting to hear about. ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [July 30, 2021, 9:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-you-discover-some-new-scientific-or-math-thing-who-are-you-supposed-to-contact/947589/32 "2021-07-30T21:19:11Z")
> [@Hatchie](#): > > Well that _ **used** _ to be the watchword, but I always had to wonder how you could publish if a giant squid was about to kill you; in that case I guess it should be “Get the hell out, then publish”! > > I think Tom Swift Jr. had the right idea, by putting a real eye-catching jacket on his book. That’s how you catch the attention of the Academy of Scientists, otherwise we would never have heard of the Jetmarine. Not true. Remember, Tom’s dad was a rich industrialist, and a famous inventor also, so Tom never had to worry about being paid attention to. Or grants. The original Tom Swifts, written by the author of Uncle Wiggly, were a lot more scientifically accurate than Tom Jr. > [@Hatchie](#): > > Get a Grant, then you can go ahead and invent something, _ **then** _ publish! And be sure to thank me in the Dedication. That’s a bit of “free advice”! (I normally don’t go around handing out valuable tips like this, but “the first one’s free”, that’s my motto.) I’ve done grant reviews for NSF, both for real research and for the Small Business program. In general you must have good results before you apply for the grant, and then use the grant money to do research to allow you to apply for your next grant. This process gets bootstrapped by university grant money for new professors. So you’ll never get any money for an idea. The Small Business program was a giant crock of shit, created by Congresscritters who wanted some of that sweet NSF money to go to real Muricans, not pointy headed scientists. I only did them because my daughter was going to college in the DC area and it allowed me to visit her on Uncle Sam’s money. Most of the businesses applying for grants appeared to have no business model except applying for grants. I finally refused being named lead reviewer in a field I knew nothing about, and got fired. Oh, each of the grant applications had a section about how the grant would help the disadvantaged, etc. My favorite one was for a grant for building robots that polished the keels of yachts. ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [July 30, 2021, 9:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-you-discover-some-new-scientific-or-math-thing-who-are-you-supposed-to-contact/947589/33 "2021-07-30T21:22:04Z")
> [@Hatchie](#): > > I know, remember Nikolai Ivanovich Lobachevsky! That was a bad one. And the Swede’s ears promptly fell off. If you haven’t already, look up Danny Kaye’s “Stanislavsky” on YouTube. The great meta-joke here is that not only is Lobachevsky about plagiarism, the song itself is basically plagiarized. Which Lehrer admits in the introduction to the live version. ---
**Author:** ![Hatchie](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hatchie/32/3983_2.png) [@Hatchie](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hatchie)\ **Post date:** [July 30, 2021, 9:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-you-discover-some-new-scientific-or-math-thing-who-are-you-supposed-to-contact/947589/34 "2021-07-30T21:35:44Z")
Okay, the woman I was thinking about was a schoolteacher named Hanny, and her anomaly was called [Hanny’s Voorwerp](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=06t36Dm3y9E). Or it was until they decided to call it a Quasar Ionization Echo, in other words, they took ownership of it by giving it a fancy name. Here is a quote from one of the Galaxy Zoo “keepers” that chilled my blood: _ **Verma:** I echo the point that it’s very difficult to program diversity and adaptability into any computer algorithm, whereas we kind of get it for free from the citizen scientists! [Laughter]_ Did you get that? “Laughter!” Sort of a kick in the teeth for poor Hanny. “Run along now, dear child, we adults will take it from here.” Fine. If I were her I’d be hiring a lawyer right now, if there’s any money to be made from this Voorwerp thing (and apparently there’s more of them out there); maybe look into applying for some kind of Outer Space copyright if it’s not too late. _At least_ get a T-shirt concession! ---
**Author:** ![Dr.Strangelove](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dr.strangelove/32/6613_2.png) [@Dr.Strangelove](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dr.Strangelove)\ **Post date:** [July 30, 2021, 9:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-you-discover-some-new-scientific-or-math-thing-who-are-you-supposed-to-contact/947589/35 "2021-07-30T21:52:35Z")
> [@Hatchie](#): > > Or it was until they decided to call it a Quasar Ionization Echo, in other words, they took ownership of it by giving it a fancy name. They don’t seem to have renamed it. [Hanny’s Voorwerp](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanny's_Voorwerp) is still the name of the object near spiral galaxy IC 2497. A quasar ionization echo is the name of the general class of phenomenon. ---
**Author:** ![Darren\_Garrison](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/darren_garrison/32/92_2.png) [@Darren\_Garrison](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darren_Garrison)\ **Post date:** [July 30, 2021, 9:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-you-discover-some-new-scientific-or-math-thing-who-are-you-supposed-to-contact/947589/36 "2021-07-30T21:56:35Z")
NM, possible misread of quote. ---
**Author:** ![Napier](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/ce73a5/32.png) [@Napier](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Napier)\ **Post date:** [July 31, 2021, 2:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-you-discover-some-new-scientific-or-math-thing-who-are-you-supposed-to-contact/947589/37 "2021-07-31T02:22:33Z")
I think a pretty practical and safe way to get a “new scientific or math thing” out there and take the credit for it would be to tell us all here. The likely result would be several Dopers telling you what the new thing has already been called for years, so you could look it up. But if you’re really onto something new, it wouldn’t be that hard retroactively to prove you’re the person who posted it. If it leads to a valuable invention, you have an entire year from the date you first publicly disclose it to file your patent (in the US), which somebody would surely agree to do if it were valuable. ---
**Author:** ![Dr.Strangelove](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dr.strangelove/32/6613_2.png) [@Dr.Strangelove](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dr.Strangelove)\ **Post date:** [July 31, 2021, 2:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-you-discover-some-new-scientific-or-math-thing-who-are-you-supposed-to-contact/947589/38 "2021-07-31T02:25:16Z")
> [@Voyager](#): > > My favorite one was for a grant for building robots that polished the keels of yachts. Oh, that’s much better than my robot, which just shocks the _human_ yacht-keel-polishers if they complain or procrastinate. They’re _laborers_; they should be laboring. ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [July 31, 2021, 7:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-you-discover-some-new-scientific-or-math-thing-who-are-you-supposed-to-contact/947589/39 "2021-07-31T19:39:05Z")
> [@Dr.Strangelove](#): > > Oh, that’s much better than my robot, which just shocks the _human_ yacht-keel-polishers if they complain or procrastinate. They’re _laborers_ ; they should be laboring. Aha! There is an NSF grant for you! ---
**Author:** ![Senegoid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/senegoid/32/6606_2.png) [@Senegoid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Senegoid)\ **Post date:** [August 1, 2021, 1:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-you-discover-some-new-scientific-or-math-thing-who-are-you-supposed-to-contact/947589/40 "2021-08-01T01:39:52Z")
> [@Dr.Strangelove](#): > > There are really quite a lot of these. Usually called crowdsourced science or citizen science. Wikipedia has a big list, with a few dozen astronomy ones: These days they just put it up on Amazon Mechanical Turk and the the Teeming Millions work on it for a penny a click. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-you-discover-some-new-scientific-or-math-thing-who-are-you-supposed-to-contact/947589.md?page=1)