Nobel-Prize Winning Research Rejected

Thanks to BenS, here is a link to a paper that chronicles all the research that was rejected by journals but which later, when published elsewhere, led to Nobel Prizes for the scholars.

Sadly, the author seems to see this as some deviation from the ideal.

[M]ost of [the] instances discussed above deal with genuine resistance to scientific discovery and it is illuminating to ascertain some of the reasons why such a resistance exists in the first place.

A possible explanation that could motivate peer resistance to scientific discovery lies in the fact that new theories or discoveries often clash with the orthodox viewpoints held by the referees.

… In other instances the problem is that referees did not appreciated the potential or the interest of the new discoveries. … Something is wrong with the peer review system when an expert consider[s] that a manuscript is not of enough interest to be published and later the work reported in such rejected paper earn[s] the Nobel Prize to their authors.

A more positive interpretation is to see these errors of commission and of omission as part of a normal, evolutionary process.

I see them as something to be expected, given scarcity. More importantly, I see the results as evidence that the system works! It is a ringing endorsement of competition among academic journals: if one journal rejects a brilliant, path-breaking article, another has an incentive to publish it and move up in the citation rankings. Without that competition, some of the break-throughs might never be published.

For what it is worth, I noticed that the author had no instances of early journal rejection of Nobel-Prize winning work in economics.

Update: Be sure to read the first comment below. It makes a number of very interesting additional points on this topic.

You Tell ‘em, Salim!

My colleague, Salim Mansur, writes a weekly colummn for the Trono Sun. His most recent column is about the positive aspects of the Iraq election. Here are some excerpts:

For the third time in a year, Iraqis confounded the world as they went to the polls Dec. 15 to electing a new 275-member parliament under the constitution they voted for in October. …



John Burns, Baghdad correspondent for the New York Times, observed Sunnis displaying “new willingness to distance themselves from the insurgency, an absence of hostility for Americans, a casual contempt for Saddam Hussein, a yearning…to find a place for themselves in the post-Hussein Iraq.”

And, for me, the kicker,

The Iraqi vote also exposes the empty platitudes of our own Paul Martin and the lib-left, and the widening disconnect between Canada’s sense of purpose and its increasingly inconsequential foreign policy of appeasing rogue regimes gathered at the UN.

You Tell ‘em, Salim!

My colleague, Salim Mansur, writes a weekly colummn for the Trono Sun. His most recent column is about the positive aspects of the Iraq election. Here are some excerpts:

For the third time in a year, Iraqis confounded the world as they went to the polls Dec. 15 to electing a new 275-member parliament under the constitution they voted for in October. …



John Burns, Baghdad correspondent for the New York Times, observed Sunnis displaying “new willingness to distance themselves from the insurgency, an absence of hostility for Americans, a casual contempt for Saddam Hussein, a yearning…to find a place for themselves in the post-Hussein Iraq.”

And, for me, the kicker,

The Iraqi vote also exposes the empty platitudes of our own Paul Martin and the lib-left, and the widening disconnect between Canada’s sense of purpose and its increasingly inconsequential foreign policy of appeasing rogue regimes gathered at the UN.

You Tell ‘em, Salim!

My colleague, Salim Mansur, writes a weekly colummn for the Trono Sun. His most recent column is about the positive aspects of the Iraq election. Here are some excerpts:

For the third time in a year, Iraqis confounded the world as they went to the polls Dec. 15 to electing a new 275-member parliament under the constitution they voted for in October. …



John Burns, Baghdad correspondent for the New York Times, observed Sunnis displaying “new willingness to distance themselves from the insurgency, an absence of hostility for Americans, a casual contempt for Saddam Hussein, a yearning…to find a place for themselves in the post-Hussein Iraq.”

And, for me, the kicker,

The Iraqi vote also exposes the empty platitudes of our own Paul Martin and the lib-left, and the widening disconnect between Canada’s sense of purpose and its increasingly inconsequential foreign policy of appeasing rogue regimes gathered at the UN.

The Sad Truth about Paul Martin in One Paragraph

Ezra Levant, writing for the Western Standard blog, says about Paul Martin (Canada’s Prime Minister),

How odd; the dauphin who was once hailed as the best prime minister Canada would ever have will be remembered as one of the worst — incoherent on policy, crude and brutish in tactics, short-sighted in strategy, the redeemer of the Bloc Quebecois, the inflamer of Western alienation, the antagonizer of America and the most indecisive PM since Joe Clark.

Demand Curves Are Not Vertical

Politicians who have tried to make a name for themselves by attacking price gougers commit several economic errors. One of the errors involves the implicit assumption that demand curves are vertical. They seem to believe that when prices go up, consumers do not change their purchasing patterns at all. This assumption is clearly wrong, and yet it persists, as noted in this piece by Steve Horowitz about gasoline pricing at a convenience store (cited by King Banaian):

The owner of [a] store … reports that over the weekend when his price was at $3.80, his sales dropped significantly. He sold 1358 gallons on 9/2, 738 gallons on 9/3, and 429 gallons on 9/4. This was also Labor Day weekend, when lots of car travel happens. His sales didn’t reach 1000 gallons again until 9/9. So the result of his supposed “price gouging?” A drop in sales! Gasp!! Demand curves slope downward after all! As the owner says in his defense “why would I purposely gouge somebody and watch my sales drop?”

The response from the AG’s spokesman: “Consumers paid a markup over the three days. They had to pay the retail price he asked, and they did.” They “had to pay” it? Evidently they did not, given the drop in sales the owner saw. Yes, he’s located out in the country, but his price was so out of line with other prices that many consumers (gasp again!) found another retailer that weekend. Some chose to buy there, of course, but it’s not like they had a gun to their head or no other options (there are 3 very competitive gas stations 7 or 8 miles down the road in my town). Notice how the AG’s office treats consumers as passive victims, even though the evidence clearly shows they made active choices in the face of high prices.

Be sure to read the entire piece for all the background and details.

One would think politicians could have a positive marginal physical product in some other activity and forget about cases like this, where their marginal physical product is clearly negative.

Update: For more evidence that higher prices lead to a reduction in the quantity demanded, see James Hamilton’s recent piece on gasoline markets.

Demand Curves Are Not Vertical

Politicians who have tried to make a name for themselves by attacking price gougers commit several economic errors. One of the errors involves the implicit assumption that demand curves are vertical. They seem to believe that when prices go up, consumers do not change their purchasing patterns at all. This assumption is clearly wrong, and yet it persists, as noted in this piece by Steve Horowitz about gasoline pricing at a convenience store (cited by King Banaian):

The owner of [a] store … reports that over the weekend when his price was at $3.80, his sales dropped significantly. He sold 1358 gallons on 9/2, 738 gallons on 9/3, and 429 gallons on 9/4. This was also Labor Day weekend, when lots of car travel happens. His sales didn’t reach 1000 gallons again until 9/9. So the result of his supposed “price gouging?” A drop in sales! Gasp!! Demand curves slope downward after all! As the owner says in his defense “why would I purposely gouge somebody and watch my sales drop?”

The response from the AG’s spokesman: “Consumers paid a markup over the three days. They had to pay the retail price he asked, and they did.” They “had to pay” it? Evidently they did not, given the drop in sales the owner saw. Yes, he’s located out in the country, but his price was so out of line with other prices that many consumers (gasp again!) found another retailer that weekend. Some chose to buy there, of course, but it’s not like they had a gun to their head or no other options (there are 3 very competitive gas stations 7 or 8 miles down the road in my town). Notice how the AG’s office treats consumers as passive victims, even though the evidence clearly shows they made active choices in the face of high prices.

Be sure to read the entire piece for all the background and details.

One would think politicians could have a positive marginal physical product in some other activity and forget about cases like this, where their marginal physical product is clearly negative.

Update: For more evidence that higher prices lead to a reduction in the quantity demanded, see James Hamilton’s recent piece on gasoline markets.

Demand Curves Are Not Vertical

Politicians who have tried to make a name for themselves by attacking price gougers commit several economic errors. One of the errors involves the implicit assumption that demand curves are vertical. They seem to believe that when prices go up, consumers do not change their purchasing patterns at all. This assumption is clearly wrong, and yet it persists, as noted in this piece by Steve Horowitz about gasoline pricing at a convenience store (cited by King Banaian):

The owner of [a] store … reports that over the weekend when his price was at $3.80, his sales dropped significantly. He sold 1358 gallons on 9/2, 738 gallons on 9/3, and 429 gallons on 9/4. This was also Labor Day weekend, when lots of car travel happens. His sales didn’t reach 1000 gallons again until 9/9. So the result of his supposed “price gouging?” A drop in sales! Gasp!! Demand curves slope downward after all! As the owner says in his defense “why would I purposely gouge somebody and watch my sales drop?”

The response from the AG’s spokesman: “Consumers paid a markup over the three days. They had to pay the retail price he asked, and they did.” They “had to pay” it? Evidently they did not, given the drop in sales the owner saw. Yes, he’s located out in the country, but his price was so out of line with other prices that many consumers (gasp again!) found another retailer that weekend. Some chose to buy there, of course, but it’s not like they had a gun to their head or no other options (there are 3 very competitive gas stations 7 or 8 miles down the road in my town). Notice how the AG’s office treats consumers as passive victims, even though the evidence clearly shows they made active choices in the face of high prices.

Be sure to read the entire piece for all the background and details.

One would think politicians could have a positive marginal physical product in some other activity and forget about cases like this, where their marginal physical product is clearly negative.

Update: For more evidence that higher prices lead to a reduction in the quantity demanded, see James Hamilton’s recent piece on gasoline markets.

Will Israel Attack Iran Soon?

David Bernsteing thinks/thought so:

This is hardly an original insight, but I predict that Israel will strike Iran within the next few months, with the goal of disrupting or terminating Iran’s nuclear program… I just returned from Israel, and I found a remarkable consensus in favor of doing whatever is necessary to stop Iran (a consensus no doubt solidified by Iranian threats to annihilate Israel, and recent vicious anti-Semitism emanating from the highest rank of the Iranian government). One leftist member of my wife’s family told me that the IDF will do whatever is necessary. When I expressed concern that Iran will retaliate through Hizbullah, he replied that the Lebanese government will stop any large-scale retaliation, or the ramifications will be disastrous in and for Beirut. Other leftists of my acquaintance were equally inclined to support vigorous action against Iran, and equally confident of the government’s ability to manage the situation. Given that the anti-Iranian consensus is so solid even on the Left, I would be very surprised if the Israeli government fails to follow through on its promise to prevent Iran from acquiring atomic weapons–assuming, of course, that Iran isn’t stopped by other international forces.

But also read the entire brief piece to see his qualifications to this assertion. And for some very thoughtful discussion of Bernstein’s posting, see this.

France: The Ted Bundy of European Nations

From Vile France, by Dennis Boyles (h/t to BenS) [I quoted the first part of this material earlier] :

In very large numbers, the French don’t like us…What we mistakenly see as a craven, anti-Semitic, insecure, hypocritical, hysterically anti-American, selfish, overtaxed, culturally exhausted country, berefit of ideas, fearful of its own capitualation to Islam, headed for a democraphic cul de sac, corrupted by lame ideologies, clinging to unsupportable entitlements, crippled by a spirit-stomping social elite and up to its neck in a cheesy soufflé of multilayered bureaucracy is actually worse than all that. It’s vile.



… In just the last half-century or so, France has been guilty of eagerly abetting the Holocaust; perpetrating more postwar anti-Semitic acts than any other country in Europe; enabling and supporting state-sponsored genocide and slaughter in Africa and Asia; attacking unarmed civilians on foreign territory; arming enemies of Western democracies; treating its young with disain and its elderly with a neglect that is often fatal; suppressing conventional human rights, especially the right to free speech; protecting murderers and war criminals from justice; pursuing a foreign policy in which mendacity is a strategy used against both friends and enemies; polluting the earth while rhetorically demanding planetary hygiene from others; pursing illegal trade activities; engaging in massive, systematic corruption and greed; worshiping self-seriousness; and undermining American foreign policy wherever possible, no matter how many lives that costs. France looks great and seems swell but it acts hideously. It’s the Ted Bundy of European nations. (Denis Boyles, Encounter Books, 2005, p.5).

I don’t know whether the London Public Library has ordered the book, yet [here is my earlier post on the subject].