{"id":504,"date":"2008-11-19T12:16:54","date_gmt":"2008-11-19T11:16:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.bmj.com\/bmj\/?p=504"},"modified":"2014-07-29T10:18:16","modified_gmt":"2014-07-29T09:18:16","slug":"liz-wager-on-newton-and-the-history-of-fish","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bmj.com\/bmj\/2008\/11\/19\/liz-wager-on-newton-and-the-history-of-fish\/","title":{"rendered":"Liz Wager on Newton and the history of fish"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.bmj.com\/site\/blog\/icons\/lizwager.jpg\" alt=\"Liz Wager\" width=\"162\" height=\"110\" align=\"left\" \/>Delays in publication are not new and neither, it seems, are bureacratic hurdles which mean that institutions fail to recognise important things. According to Wikipedia the Royal Society had no money to print Newton\u2019s <a title=\"Principa Mathmatica\" href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Principia_Mathematica_Philosophiae_Naturalis\" target=\"_blank\">Principia Mathematica<\/a> because &#8220;the Society had just spent\u00a0its book budget on a history of fish.&#8221; But, luckily, <a title=\"Edmund Halley\" href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Edmund_Halley\" target=\"_blank\">Edmund Halley<\/a> realised the importance of Newton\u2019s work and was prepared to bear the initial production costs.<!--more--><\/p>\n<p>I am tempted to try to find a copy of the infamous &#8220;history of fish&#8221; \u2026 as a non-mathematical zoologist it would probably make more sense to me than Newton\u2019s classic anyway (and I bet it\u2019s got nicer pictures). There is something both depressing and strangely reassuring to discover idiocies from over 300 years ago.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Liz Wager<\/strong> is a freelance writer, trainer and publications consultant who works for a number of pharmaceutical companies, communication agencies, publishers and academic institutions. She is also the Secretary of COPE (the Committee On Publication Ethics) and a member of the BMJ&#8217;s Ethics Committee.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Delays in publication are not new and neither, it seems, are bureacratic hurdles which mean that institutions fail to recognise important things. According to Wikipedia the Royal Society had no [&#8230;]<\/p>\n<p><a class=\"btn btn-secondary understrap-read-more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/blogs.bmj.com\/bmj\/2008\/11\/19\/liz-wager-on-newton-and-the-history-of-fish\/\">More&#8230;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1404],"tags":[628,626,627,317,625],"class_list":["post-504","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-liz-wager","tag-edmund-halley","tag-newton","tag-principia-mathematica","tag-research","tag-royal-society"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.6 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Liz Wager on Newton and the history of fish - The BMJ<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/blogs.bmj.com\/bmj\/2008\/11\/19\/liz-wager-on-newton-and-the-history-of-fish\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Liz Wager on Newton and the history of fish - The BMJ\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Delays in publication are not new and neither, it seems, are bureacratic hurdles which mean that institutions fail to recognise important things. 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