390 BioScience • May 2005 / Vol. 55 No. 5ViewpointThe physicist Wolfgang Pauli re-portedly once told a colleague, “Idon’t mind your thinking slowly. I mindyour publishing faster than you canthink.” Certainly, biology has its shareof individuals whose zeal for publica-tion exceeds the thoroughness of theiranalyses, and who seem more interestedin getting their research into a high-profile journal than in, well, getting itright. But a much larger problem lieswith scientists who work for years butrarely submit their results to a refereedjournal.There are many reasons why this fail-ure to publish is a scientific crime. Themost obvious is that the information islost to the world.When the scientist whohas studied species X for two decades—and published not one jot of data—getshit by a truck, most of that knowledgewill be buried with him or her. The per-son lying under the truck’s wheels maywell have stimulated many colleagues,probably by presenting some findingsat conferences (a common dodge toavoid actually writing something up).But without publications, that scientist’swork will have been largely wasted.Part of the problem, if I may be per-mitted a dubious food-related metaphor,is that some scientists live for the hunt,not for the cooking and serving. Theseare individuals who love to solve prob-lems. For them, results always lead tomore questions, which lead to morestudies, which lead to more questions,and on and on. Instead of taking time towrite up the work they’ve finished, theykeep returning to the field. The field isfun.Yet all research scientists—especiallyif they receive public funding—have asolemn obligation to publish their re-sults. We don’t disseminate informationjust for amusement or academic satis-faction. We do so because, ultimately,judgments about the management andprotection of any animal or plant pop-ulation should be based upon the best—make that the best available—scientificdata. Information that sits around un-published for years is worthless to man-agers and to other scientists, and thusdoes nothing for the conservation of theorganisms we study.Publications are indeed everything inscience. They are the fertilizer (no jokes,please, especially about any of my papers)that stimulates ideas in other scientists.Published knowledge is assimilated bycolleagues and leads to more research:hypotheses are modified, rebutted, orconfirmed, new paradigms are devel-oped or old ones discarded. In a veryreal sense, publications are the scientificmethod.Another vital reason to publish ispeer review. Granted, the peer-reviewprocess is far from perfect, and we’veall seen papers that are inadequate or justplain wrong, but which nonethelessmanaged to sneak through review un-scathed. Ironically, some of these are inthe highest-ranked journals, some ofwhose reviewers are, I fear, too busy orill-chosen to do a good job. My friendPaul Wade and I joke about starting a journal called Nature and Science Rebuttals; we’re convinced it would havea huge following.But most of the time peer review is avery useful, constructive process. I haveprobably learned more about the busi-ness of conducting research from ref-eree comments than from any othersingle source. Some of those reviewsspared no feelings, but that’s okay; I havenever taken comments personally whenthey were given in good faith, which theyalmost always are.Those who do not submit their re-search to peer review are preventing theirwork from attaining its full potential.Worse, they risk making uncorrectablemistakes in study design. You can fixbad analysis and poor interpretation,but you can never redo a long-term fieldstudy. Imagine someone who has toiledaway forever without publishing, andwho finally submits his or her life’s workto a journal—only to be told by the referees that because X,Y, and Z weren’tincorporated into the study design 10years ago, the work was largely a waste ofeffort.It is all too easy to talk endlessly aboutone’s ideas, and those who do this oftenbecome trapped in an illusory feedbackloop. Talk to the public or to any non-specialist audience, and they’ll of coursetell you how terrific your theories are(they don’t know any better); and if youhear enough of this unfettered praise,you may actually start to believe it. Butrun those same ideas past an expert ref-eree, and you may find them suddenlywilting under the scrutiny.This brings me to a rather less obvi-ous reason to publish.As someone whohas published around 100 papers, I canunequivocally tell you this: committingyour work to paper forces you to thinkabout your research in ways that younever will by simply talking about it.First, it requires that you carefully orga-nize that sprawling mass that is yourdata. When that’s done, the act of puttingyour methods, results, and discussioninto words obliges you to define yourthoughts quite precisely, and to considerthe meaning of your work far moredeeply than you ever will for a talk. Startto write, and you’ll find ideas occurringto you that had never surfaced before.What’s more, reading other papers willexpose you to many concepts (and prob-lems) that you had not previously con-sidered. But if you do not do this, you willnot be doing your research justice—guaranteed.Publish or PerishPHIL CLAPHAMTo state that those who don’t publishmay as well not do the work in the firstplace is undeniably harsh, though notunreasonable: if you don’t publish, you’rewasting everyone’s time and takingmuch-needed funding away from otherscientists. It isn’t that you need to becomeone of the behemoths of publication. (Iam thinking here of a couple of indi-viduals in my own field—Hal White-head and Randall Reeves come tomind—who publish so many papers ofsuch consistently great quality that I findmyself worrying about them: do theyever sleep?) But you do need to publishat least the most significant parts of yourwork.Not that the writing of a scientific pa-per is an easy task for the novice. The lateBill Watkins—legendary for both his sci-ence and his red pen—informally re-viewed my own first effort, and whenthe manuscript returned to me I thoughthe had ritually sacrificed some small an-imal over it. I don’t know how manypublications went by before the writingof a scientific paper became routine forme, but one day I suddenly realized Iwas no longer agonizing over structureand content. So take heart: it gets easierwith each paper you take on.If you really can’t write