I was greatly heartened by David Horrobin's article "Discouraging Hypotheses Slows Progress" [The Scientist, Nov. 26, 1990, page 13]. For 10 years I have been attempting to publish what amounts to a unified hypothesis of the evolutionary development of intermediary metabolic cell growth control and, in particular, how it relates to cellular differentiation and cancer cell growth. Of course, a full testing of the hypothesis would be nothing short of a Manhattan Project-sized undertaking. However, with the last decade's massive data explosion resulting from biotechniques advances and the (primarily) uncoordinated research effort from numerous sectors of focused study, the hypothesis increasingly rests on firmer and firmer ground. Yet the scientific community remains wholly unaware of the hypothesis, precisely because of the reasons outlined by Horrobin.
Although I graduated at the top of my class, and in the top 1 percent worldwide, this inability to publish a unifying theory has not...
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