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      Welcome to Beautiful Mind; a Call to Action

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          Abstract

          By definition, a hypothesis is a premise or assumption that is not yet verified or validated. The author looking to publish a bona fide hypothesis cannot do so by simply providing outline tables of raw data or pictures of tissues as proof (1). But, is now the time to start a journal in the field of ophthalmic hypotheses? Unfortunately, visual impairment is a global and ubiquitous health problem. Thus far, there are a number of ophthalmology journals and hundreds of other journals that publish articles related to visual sciences to overcome the ocular problems and find novel solution and control of ophthalmic diseases as well as improve quality of life. Moreover, specialized ophthalmic hypotheses journal does not yet exist in the global forum. Although many scientific journals have special sections for publishing ideas and novel hypotheses, there appears to be an unoccupied niche for specialized journals like ours which has a wider scope. Medical Hypothesis, Discovery & Innovation (MEHDI) Ophthalmology Journal is an international peer-review journal in which we publish evidence-based ideas and hypotheses in the realm of ophthalmology and visual sciences. We look for discoveries, minimal invasive surgeries, new modalities of treatment, software, innovative instruments, and any texts that contain creativity and ideas in ophthalmology and visual sciences in order to publish them for maximum visibility. Journal has already been registered in well-known databases such as Index Copernicus, Genomics journal seek, Ulrich's, Research gate, Pubs Hub, RoMEO UK, and it will be soon registered in other reliable databases. It is our belief that current and novel ideas deserve more credit; that they should be published in a timely manner, perhaps with some fanfare, if warranted. The idea being postulated must be argued in a clear and compelling manner at our journal. Reform movements always have some opposition therefore our journal provides space for critiques and publishes articles in a logical form in the ideology, and even for challenging ideas too. Usually, a researcher is concerned about others in making his discoveries and is therefore tremendously eager to have his ideas published as quickly as possible. Therefore, in our model, the average reviewing process would be 29 working days from submission to decision to respect the concern of scientists. Public Knowledge Project (PKP) management software administers publication in this journal and is one of the most reliable software packages in journal management. Many reliable scientific journals use that same software in order to improve the scholarly and public quality of academic research through the improvement of innovative online environments. This journal has several other interesting characteristics: ● Journal would also publish researches with no positive results as we believe that science is not merely about publishing positive outcomes. In some instances, if the researcher has negative results, these findings are seen as valuable so that another researcher does not waste his time conducting the same study. ● Looking back on the current era, observers are unlikely to regard it as a ‘golden age’ of various developments in medical sciences (2) and majority of progress had been occurred in science and technology. The history of science and progress of humanity is of great importance and understanding it would be a most positive direction for moving forward. Therefore, historical articles of science or philosophy of science should receive a significant amount of attention in this journal. ● Sometimes, we publish innovative laboratory processes and techniques in testing in order to improve the methodology and design of future studies. ● It is important to consider new ideas from a broader perspective; that we shouldn’t necessarily limit ourselves to the current content in laboratories. For instance, a researcher might perform extensive research in molecular sciences on a special enzyme, gene or a biochemical pathway and ignore the social determinants of diseases. We believe that it is critically important to widen the field of ideas from molecular to population-based studies. In this case, with all due respect to molecular sciences, our journal anticipates ideas and hypotheses that focus on social and psychological issues as well. ● Journal proves that publication of similar specialty and subspecialty areas are required. A team is working to establish the feasibility of journals with same goal in optometry and seven sub specialized sections. ● As of now, this journal tries to classify and publish subspecialty papers. In this volume, major articles which have been published are in the anterior segment section and in future issues we will work subspecialties on the retina, glaucoma, basic science, etc. ● Sometimes, other journals do not allow for the publishing of new ideas and hypotheses. They ask for evidence and up-to-date references for even small sentences. In our journal, ideas with merit are published immediately if they are new, practical, and well described. ● In some issues, due to the importance of some of the subjects, we publish invited papers. As an example, the pervasiveness of poverty throughout the world has meant that many diseases cannot be controlled. For that reason, we invite researchers who have ideas on how to best solve or mitigate against this universal crisis to submit their manuscripts to the journal. ● This journal attributes high importance to the exchanging of information and discussions in the published papers as there might be new ideas emerging from those discussions, and those ideas could be a causal factor in future positive change. Ideas from other researchers across the world are a welcome contribution. As stated, we are fan of new ideas; however, the opinions that are published in this journal are solely those of the authors. The publication of them does not mean full approval of their hypotheses; nor are they the opinion of the editorial board and Editors-in-Chiefs. The validity and vigorousness of references at the end of articles are also considered as we hope to provide a good forum for authors to source new ideas. Essentially, hypotheses are not necessarily theoretical issues. There might be cases when a physician observes an unknown disease or syndrome in his clinic and if the findings are remarkable enough, he might submit them in a manuscript. If the paper has been prepared in a logical manner and there is evidence based on scientific fact, we would publish it in our journal immediately. Our emphasis is on high quality articles which we would have journal-indexed in distinguished databases immediately so that they would have maximum visibility. The journal also publishes ideas that might have only a theoretical basis. In addition, if a researcher tests the idea published in the journal in a scientific framework, and submits his findings to the journal based on the fact presented at our former issues, that paper would be immediately published as well. Articles that do not have fresh ideas or were not prepared logically, and/or were not able to convey their meaning to the reader would not be published. At the same time, this journal is highly sensitive to science misconduct and if there are indications of fraud and plagiarism in a paper, it would not be published and/or simply retracted. Our goal is that after reading the paper, new ideas are formed in the reader’s mind which in turn will generate positive changes in a honestly situation. Perhaps, at the end of each year, the accumulation of applied ideas could be published as a book, such as “Death Can be Cured” which was a product of papers published in Medical Hypothesis (3). We believe that, if only one scientific change could be achieved, or a major medical problem solved from the hundreds of ideas and hypotheses that will be published in the journal, the editorial team would feel that they have made a noteworthy contribution. The editorial board of this journal includes elected university professors, lecturers, and researchers who have already published valuable scientific studies. As evident in their titles and affiliations, the board has been selected from five continents and a number of the members are presidents of prestigious ophthalmology societies from all around the world. And finally, our major goal is to push ophthalmology forward by presenting innovative ideas and discoveries. On behalf of the editorial team, we welcome potential subscripts and we hope our presence in the variety of scientific journals would build the groundwork toward new changes in life, health and medicine. It is our hope that the papers prove to be valuable; certainly worth the time it takes to read them. DISCLOSURE The authors report no conflicts of interest in this work.

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          Medical research funding may have over-expanded and be due for collapse.

          The continual and uninterrupted expansion of medical research funding is generally assumed to be a permanent feature of modern societies, but this expectation may turn out to be mistaken. Sciences tend to go through boom and bust phases. Twentieth century physics is an example where huge increases in funding followed an era of scientific breakthroughs. Speculative over-expansion led to diminishing returns on investment, then a collapse in funding. We predict that medicine will follow the same trajectory. After prolonged over-funding of the 'basic-to-applied' model of clinical innovation, and a progressive shift towards Big Science organization, medical research has become increasingly inefficient and ineffective. Although incremental improvements to existing treatment strategies continue, the rate of significant therapeutic breakthroughs has been declining for three decades. Medical science now requires rationalization and modernization. From this perspective, the current level of medical research funding looks like a bubble due to burst.
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            How to write up a hypothesis: the good, the bad and the ugly.

            Medical Hypotheses exists to give ideas and speculations in medicine a fair hearing. Doing this is not easy. Most conventional journals would regard some of what is published here as questionable, most referees would reject it as 'unproven'. We have more liberal standards, for reasons we have presented before. But we still require 'good' science -- logical argument that is supported by fact and comes to interesting, even useful, conclusions. Alas, not everything received comes close to even this liberal standard. Since I joined the Editorial Board I have read about 130 submissions to Medical Hypotheses. They range from exciting and insightful papers that might be substantial advances in their field, to complete rubbish. I want to lay out what I believe to be the essence of the former so as to avoid having to read so much of the latter.
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              A book of ideas collected from Medical Hypotheses: Death can be cured by Roger Dobson.

              B Charlton (2007)
              A new collection of ideas from Medical Hypotheses by Roger Dobson is entitled Death can be cured and 99 other Medical Hypotheses. It consists of humorous summaries of Medical Hypotheses articles from the past 30 years. The book's humour derives mainly from the subject matter, although sometimes also from the 'unconventional' approach of the authors with respect to matters such as evidence, argument or inference. Medical Hypotheses has generated such a lot of apparently- or actually-bizarre ideas because it aims to be open to potentially revolutionary science. The journal's official stance is that more harm is done by a failure to publish one idea that might have been true, than by publishing a dozen ideas that turn out to be false. Bizarre ideas tend to catch attention, and may stimulate a valuable response--even when a paper is mostly-wrong. A paper may be flawed but still contain the germ of an idea that can be elaborated and developed. The journal review process is susceptible to both false positives and false negatives. False positives occur when we publish an idea that is wrong; false negatives occur when we fail to publish an important idea that is right, and a potential scientific breakthrough never happens. False positives are more obvious, since the paper will be ignored, refuted, or fail to be replicated--and often attracts criticism and controversy. Editors may therefore take the more cautious path of avoiding false positives more assiduously than false negatives; however, this policy progressively favours less-ambitious science. Consequently, in Medical Hypotheses the 'set point' of risk is nearer to the false positive end of the spectrum than for most journals - and the publication of many apparently-bizarre papers is a natural consequence of this policy.
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                Author and article information

                Journal
                Med Hypothesis Discov Innov Ophthalmol
                Med Hypothesis Discov Innov Ophthalmol
                mehdiophth
                Medical Hypothesis, Discovery and Innovation in Ophthalmology
                Medical Hypothesis, Discovery & Innovation Ophthalmology
                2322-4436
                2322-3219
                Spring 2012
                : 1
                : 1
                : 1-2
                Affiliations
                [1 ]School of Medicine, Shahid Beheshti University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran
                [2 ]Editorial Office, Medical Hypothesis, Discovery & Innovation Ophthalmology Journal
                Author notes
                Correspondence to: Reza Gharebaghi, MD, Editorial Office, Medical Hypothesis, Discovery & Innovation Ophthalmology Journal, Email: info@meptic.com
                Article
                mehdiophth-1-001
                3939738
                8de3fade-ccc1-44bb-b654-e97afab6da9b
                © 2012, Medical Hypothesis, Discovery & Innovation (MEHDI) Ophthalmology Journal

                This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, ( http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/) which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

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                ophthalmology,medical hypotheses,innovation,idea,strategy
                ophthalmology, medical hypotheses, innovation, idea, strategy

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