Why is publishing findings important to the scientific method

Because science insists that a finding be reproducible by anyone who is a peer to the scientist publishing the finding. It isn't science until someone approves of or agrees with or gets the same result as the person submitting the finding to scrutiny.

In my younger years, we heard claims like Laetrile kills cancer. It was such a wide spread popular belief that Sloan Kettering (one of the most famous of all cancer clinics in the world) decided to test it rigorously. They found nothing except a toxicity. (Laetrile is derived from peach pits and if taken orally will break down to cyanide which is a poison). If you are under 60, my guess is that you are going to have to do some research to find out what Laetrile is, what it does, what it doesn't do, and why you shouldn't use it. Thank goodness the fairy tale of its effectiveness died the death it deserved all because the claims were submitted to testing.

If Laetrile wasn't tested, and people relied as they always had on medical folk tales rather than the scientific method, many more people would have died than did.

the answer is solomon northrup. he was a free-born african american, abolitionist and professional violinist that was drugged, kidnapped and sold as slave in 1841 and remained in captivity until 1853 where he regained his freedom with the of the then-governor of new york, washington hunt. he wrote and published his memoirs "twelve years a slave" in 1853, and in this text, he tells the story of his escape thru one of louisiana's swamps (the great pacoudrie swamp) in which he ended up covered in green slime from crossing the surface of the dead water.

by appointing the chair and a majority of the members