Mehar S Manku on assuming the editorship of Medical Hypotheses

Having been aMedical Hypotheses Editorial Board Member since January 2004, I am delighted to now take on the editorship of the Journal. It is an exciting Journal which was established in 1975 by the late Dr. David Horrobin. At the time, I was his Ph.D. student at the University of Newcastle-upon-Tyne. After my doctorate, I also worked with him at the Clinical Research Institute of Montreal. I can recall how the Journal was established and how the first issue was published with a bright yellow cover. When I asked David ‘‘why yellow?”, he said jokingly that the refreshing colour reflected a refreshing new approach to the publication of scientific ideas! David always quoted Linus Pauling, the two time Nobel Prize winner and one of the first Medical Hypotheses Editorial Board Members, who once said ‘‘The best way to get a good idea is to get a lot of ideas” – David and Linus both believed that those scientists who are passionate about what they do tend to come up with the most ideas. By starting Medical Hypotheses, David was establishing an outlet for the publication of those ideas in the form of hypotheses presented as regular scientific papers. Those who knew him will recall that he also wrote well and contributed many of his own ideas to the Journal. David was a bright medical scientist whose many ideas were sometimes criticised by his peers. However, he drew inspiration, as do I, from Alfred Bernhard Nobel who once said ‘‘If I have a thousand ideas and only one turns out to be good, I am satisfied”. David encouraged others to develop new concepts in medical treatments and to publish those concepts in the Journal. Medical Hypotheses therefore exists to give open-minded consideration to novel, radical ideas and speculations in medicine which would probably be rejected by most conventional journals. In the words of David’s Editorial in Volume 1, Issue 1 of the Journal, ‘‘Medical Hypotheses will publish papers which describe theories, ideas which have a great deal of observational support and some hypotheses where experimental support is yet fragmentary” [1]. As the new Editor, I make two commitments to ensure the long term success of Medical Hypotheses: first, Elsevier and I will retain the ethos, heritage and unique characteristics of the Journal as they were proposed at inception; secondly, we will engage a medicallyqualified Editorial Board whose members will be involved in reviewing the hypotheses submitted to the Journal – their reviews and mine will ensure that the radical new ideas and speculations in medicine for which the Journal is intended are given open-minded