<p>Let’s say someone discovers something in a field he doesn’t have a degree in (e.g. creates revolutionary idea on artificial intelligence, without having any related university study such as Engineering or Computer, e.g. discovers “by chance” a formula to create a new medicine, but has no degree in Pharmacology or Medicine, etc.).</p>
<p>Is this person allowed to research, write essays, and promote this discovery, also by acquiring background knowledge through self-study?</p>
<p>umm its a free country as far as I know and (assuming you live in America) you don’t have to have a degree to research. However, without a degree you will have trouble getting grants to fund research, facilities to house the research, etc. Also, licenses are needed if you are going to work with human test subjects and I’m sure for working with contained viruses and bacteria. However if all you want to do is write essays and promote it then nothing is needed.</p>
<p>lol the title of this thread is a bit creepy even if you weren’t going for that effect…the use of the word it leaves me wondering what “it” is.</p>
<p>Feels like Silence of the lambs…</p>
<p>lol brand…</p>
<p>it puts the lotion in the basket…</p>
<p>precious, precious little thread! </p>
<p>uh, anyway, OP if you are studying extra hard in a humanities based subject and really feel comfortable going full throttle with trying to get published or something then you can try and do that.</p>
<p>Utterly nothing against it, but something completely unexpected like that doesn’t happen often because researchers tend to know how other fields intersect with their own. There are exceptions of course: for example, a Nobel Prize in Physics was given to a few engineers at Bell Labs who were testing radio equipment and accidentally picked up noise from the Big Bang. They didn’t know what it was, first figuring it was due to pigeon sh:t on their outdoor equipment and the like, until a few weeks later a physicist at Princeton heard about their maladies and told them what they’d found! 
That said, if your theory is very outlandish and it’s based in another field than many people might not believe you due to your credentials. One of the biggest arguments against plate tectonics when it was first proposed, for example, was that couldn’t be true as a meteorologist proposed it who hence couldn’t have known enough geology.
Oh, and don’t forget that Einstein published his first papers while working in a patent office as he had terrible grades in college. Apparently his papers had no citations and the like, however, so if they were submitted to journals today they’d be considered crackpot theories and immediately scrapped.</p>
<p>Thanks.</p>
<p>Though it will be hard to get research funds, I will still be able to discuss it with true professionals, right?
Well, if I pay them enough…?</p>
<p>yes, but they might not believe you because you have no formal training in that area of study</p>
<p>alero86 </p>
<p>Honey, you are not going to get research funds for jack unless you have the schooling to back things up.</p>
<p>But, you do have a right to make an attempt to participate in “calls for papers” for journals. You just have to make sure your research and writing skills are near perfect. </p>
<p>And, it is a free country, so you can e mail or call or mail (at their University of research) any academian you would like for free. </p>
<p>No academian is going to take money from you!?</p>