The nineteenth century has been pictured as a period of institutionalization and professionalization of science. The establishment of new specialized scientific journals during the second half of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries has traditionally been seen as part of this process, which had to lead to the
establishment of scientific disciplines. In this context, the new specialized journals not only published research results relevant to specific branches of scientific knowledge, but also became spaces where
priority claims were disputed and validated by an international community of experts.
Nevertheless, the non-specialized press kept playing an important role during those years in providing social and scientific prestige, legitimacy, and power to scientists. In particular, the role played by daily newspapers was crucial during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries in disciplines with a strong presence of amateur scientists, such as astronomy. In fact, several scientists presented in these general-interest publications some of their most controversial hypothesis and scientific ideas. No doubt, some scholars found it easier to present to a lay audience their intuitions, thoughts and theories on disputed natural phenomena. This was encouraged by the fact that these texts, addressed to a lay audience, could be far more speculative than the papers to be published in specialized journals – to be read by a more demanding international scientific community.
As this paper will demonstrate, these articles published in general-interest publications became even more useful in peripheral countries. Here, scientists had more difficulties engaging in scientific disputes
and priority claims with the international scientific community. The non-specialized press proved crucial to gain social legitimacy and authority in the public sphere, which opened the doors for developing an
academic and/or professional career in science. Therefore, as this paper will show, speculative articles published in daily newspapers and addressed to a general public became an important tool for some
scientists to later use them as authoritative texts and claim priority on controversial topics in front of the international scientific community.