Note that Wu's article is in Scientific Reports, not Nature. SR is far lower in the "prestige rank" of physics journals, and it's far easier to get papers accepted there, so omissions are more likely. On the other hand, Meessen's paper appears to be unpublished (or according to google scholar, maybe published in a predatory open access journal) --- and it raises some red flags that the author didn't want to / couldn't get it published via standard channels. Not planning to read it, but critical eye may be warranted.
A critical eye is always warranted, but the prestige of a journal has no bearing on the correctness of the claim. This attitude is harmful to science. Perhaps his analysis is incorrect or lacking somehow, but that's not the argument you make.
Generally speaking, if a paper is published in a bad journal, it often means it was submitted first also to other journals, but rejected by reviewers. Hence, it is more likely there's something wrong with it. Reading papers takes time, so it is useful to be aware beforehand of how likely the time is well spent. How is it in this specific case is then a different question. (Predatory open access is bad --- publishing work on your own website OTOH is fairly neutral.)
I disagree on your logic that discredit articles not published in high ranked peer review journals. First this assume that peer review is unbiased which is wrong. There are subjects that will be rejected because they are simply too controversial and present a risk for the credibility of the journal. This is totally independent on the scientific validity, value and pertinence of the article content.
Some articles may be rejected or strongly frowned upon by referee just because the author has also published on controversial topics like UFOs while the submitted article is not addressing a controversial subject. Again this is to protect the credibility of the journal.
Finally, the fact that the author is known or not also strongly influence the referee's criticism. An author which is known through conferences and communication exchange is more likely to be trusted on the seriousness and validity of his work. A submission of a much less known author will be examined with circonspection and strong criticism, against just as a protection measure.
You don't take in account those bias while what should really matter is the scientific validity of the content. If you don't have the compentence to judge the content, then your red flag raising has nothing to do with science. It's just gossip.
There is another bias in your analysis. You assume that an author of a theory will always submit his article to a peer review journal. You deduce that if he doesn't, it implies that the article was rejected. This is wrong logic.
People woes career is research tend in general to focus on one specific research domain and do publish in peer review journals or perish (loose financial support and eventually their job). But this is not the case for everybody and especially not for Prof.Meessen woes job was teaching physics in a university. He had the luxury to be free to chose any research topic he wanted and found interesting (not possible anymore). This explains the diversity of his research topics. Also as a theorist all he needed was a very good chair, paper and pencils. He had no dependencies on budgets, lab space and instruments, or personnel.
The assumptions I read in this thread apply to career researchers but can't be used as a tautology.
Another wrong assumption is that referee are always perfectly competent, impartial, objective and honest judges. Referee are humans raised in school of thoughts, have opinions and have limit in their domain and depth of competence. Implying that a rejected article MUST be crack-pottery is completely ignoring this and is thus also a bogus logic.
If an article is rejected, the scientific validity and pertinence is thus a priori UNKNOWN. What IS determinant to evaluate the scientific validity of an article are the ARGUMENTS of rejection. You don't even consider them.
As an example Prof. Meessen submitted an article on his study on the rotating compass. In his article he used as example a testimony involving multiple military ships and I think documented in the project blue book. Based on the theory presented in the book a referee computed the intensity of the EM field that should have been produced by the UFO. The intensity was many Tesla if I remember well. The referee said something along the line that no known material could sustain such EM magnetic field or an EM field of this intensity can't be produced. I'm not fully sure because I heard of it more than 25 years ago.
The objective and true reality is that we DON'T KNOW if it's possible or not. The article was thus rejected because of the ASSUMPTION (belief/opinion) of the referee that it was impossible and the editor buying it. Of course Prof.Meessen didn't waste more time to confront with such types of referees and clueless journal editors who can't distinguish good referees from impostors. He than published his work in the Book on the Belgian UFO flap. Red flag you say ?
Another wrong assumption of yours is that articles are always rejected because referee reject articles. It may happen also that referee say they can't decide and don't want thus to endorse the publication of the article. In these rare case, met by Prof. Meessen for his space time quantification theory, it is then common practice that the journal editor ask the author to suggest referees. These then act in fact as endorsers. If you have a strong network and are in close contact with well known people working on the same research subject, you can provide them to the editors and these people know if you are a crook or a respectable scientist. But if you worked mainly alone as did Prof.Meessen you are stuck. So in this case the lack, or small number, of publications doesn't prove anything beyond the fact that he doesn't have many publications. Again completely bogus logic.
If you are a scientist I would advise you to reconsider your career because your reasoning is deficient and wrong in so many ways. I guess you know where to put your red flag now.
Einstein was very lucky that the chief editor of Annalen der Physik was Max Planck [1] who was a really smart and open minded scientist. He would have had a huge red flag I guess. We are missing such types of editors and scientists.
This theory was presented at the International Symposium on Ball Lightning in 2010. The proceedings were published in 2012. See my other comment. I agree that it isn't made fully clear in the referenced article.
Anyway, I don't see why a red flag would have to be raised if it wasn't screen by peer review. This is a logical fallacy. The scientific value should be judged on its content, not the context.
International Symposium on Ball Lightning (ISBL-10), June 21-27, 2010, Kaliningrad, Russia. Proceedings: Journal of Unconventional Electromagnetics and Plasmas (UEP, India), Vol. 4, 163-179, 2012.
