Hypothetical Science

There are some crazy notions out there, for instance, that the world will come to an end in 2012 or that humankind is ruled by shape-shifting alien reptiles. In his day, Einstein already purported that “imagination is more important than knowledge”. And, to cater for all those imaginative medical scientists of today and their unusual ideas, a platform was created called Medical Hypotheses. Its organisation was as radical as the ideas it published, being one of the few peer-review-free scientific journals. Articles were selected by the editor alone, depending on what he found to be “interesting and important theoretical papers”. Papers that would never have been published by a peer-review based journal.

Using this kind of system has its pros and cons. On the pro side: you are still able to get your revolutionary ideas out into the public, even if in that moment, you don’t happen to have access to “ten elephants, a large hadron collider and a rocketship”, as someone commented in Nature’s blog, or maybe you utterly disagree with the whole scientific world about what has been generally accepted as a medical fact. Well, everyone’s entitled to have an opinion but it becomes dangerous when theories are taken too seriously…

According to famous AIDS researcher, Peter Duesberg’s belief, it’s not the HI virus but recreational drug abuse and anti-retroviral treatment that lead to AIDS. In 2000, Duesberg became a member of the South African “Presidential AIDS Advisory Panel” and, based upon recommendations by the panel, not enough meds were provided to needy patients leading to the untimely death of several thousand people.

By publishing a paper, in which Duesberg disputes these facts, Medical Hypotheses put a spoke in its own wheel. Many HIV/AIDS researchers were not amused that Duesberg was given a platform to spread his curious theories even further and, as if that weren’t enough, they noticed many flaws and misinterpretation of data in the paper. The controversy forced publisher giant Elsevier to put the brakes on, withdraw the paper, instate a reviewer committee and fire (now former) editor, Bruce Charlton. He defends himself in his blog, “Peter Duesberg is a brilliant and highly knowledgeable scientist with a track record of exceptional achievement that includes election to the US National Academy of Sciences. However, his unyielding opposition to the prevailing theory that HIV is a sufficient cause of AIDS has made Duesberg an international hate figure, and his glittering career has been pretty much ruined. If I had rejected this paper for fear of the consequences, I would have been betraying the basic ethos of the journal.”

But was that really why Charlton decided to publish this controversial article? There could’ve been yet another reason, namely, to cause a major media stir as one Nature blogger suspects, passing the buck back to Charlton. “The word going around seems to be that the love of controversy for its own sake, and the consequent attention, came to be rather too important in the scheme of things.”

All in all, especially in science, it’s a good thing to provoke discussions or even a controversy, which is, by the way, also the main mission of the journal. Researchers, too wrapped up in their own little world, would start to see things from a different angle, get inspired. However, as there’s usually a thin red line between ingenious and insane ideas, it lies in the hands of the editor to carefully select papers solely on scientific grounds.

Now, a new journal for lateral thinkers, Hypotheses in the Life Sciences, wants to step into the breach. Founded by one of the former editorial board members of Medical Hypotheses, William Bains, the journal primarily embraces hypotheses that are “testable with simple, low cost, readily available resources” and that are “supported by good citations”. Hypotheses in the Life Sciences will be available online only and as an open access resource.

Kathleen Gransalke

(photo: Fotolia/ Robert Lehmann)