Every week thousands of academic articles heralding discoveries in medicine and science are vetted and validated before being published in no-nonsense journals with names such as “Acta Crystallographica,” “Methods in Enzymology,” or “Macromolecules”.
Like works of art, these building blocks of human knowledge vary in quality and importance. Some are trivial, or just plain wrong.
But a few will usher in major change in our lives or a seismic shift in perspective, whether the possibility of growing a new heart or liver from a tiny patch of skin, or a unified theory of the cosmos. Among those quoted: Shanan Peters, a geologist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.