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A long latency
" Beware of notions that are new to be sure, but of which no use can be made after they have been defined" Lebesgue (quoted by Mandelbrot, 1977, re-quoted by an anonymous referee in his imprimatur non potest).
Fraisse suggested that I publish the core of experimental and mathematical findings without the "cognitive envelope" of the process of discovery (which I still consider an essential part of my pursuit). I submitted my article in the following months in different versions, short and long, to three top scientific journals in turn, without success. Needless to say I was disappointed by the systematic refusals. But now these failures might take on a new meaning in the context of an essay about the psychogenesis of a scientific idea. I have collected the peer reviews concerning my papers. I must say that all of them helped me a lot to explain better some critical points of my work now. This is the great advantage of scientific open criticism and I remain very grateful to these anonymous and dedicated experts. Some critical comments are worthy of transcription because of the large range of the referees opinions.This, I am sure, is a most common finding in the history of science, small or big. I can list some of them following a gradient from pros to contras:
1. "This is an excellent brief report which suggests the application of a new type of geometrical thinking, "fractals", to the problem of ocular movements".
2. "I would encourage the author to pursue the ideas presented here. The speculations presented here might well be developed further, with apropiate tests of the hypothesis the author presents".
3. "This is an interesting notion, which deserves being pursued. However the empirical evidence presented in support of it is not compelling".
4. "I strongly reccomend not to publish this article. The proof of the fractal nature of the dimension that could be associate to the path of saccadic eye movements is clearly insufficient. It is only a coarse analogy".
5. "This work is a particular degenerate example of mathematical psychology and unworthy of publication".
This last lapidary remark deprived me of my will to publish. Fortunately Mandelbrot came once again to my rescue and provided me with invaluable moral support. In 1980 he kindly wrote to me "vos résultats sont si intéressants que je me propose d'en faire état dans une prochaine publication". In 1983 he was still confident in my fractal model and wrote "I regret that your papers were turned down, but this used to happen consistenly to my own works before fractals became the rage". When I finally met Mandelbrot at Harvard in 1986 he still was interested in my findings and we talk also about the "fractal nature of Fibonacci trees", another of my researches in progress. A fractal pursuit without end!
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