How to (riously) read a scientific paper
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By Elisabeth Pain Mar. 21, 2016 , 1:15 PM
Adam Ruben’s tongue-in-cheek column about the common difficulties and frustrations of reading a scientific paper broadly resonated among Science Careers readers. Many of you have come to us asking for more (and more rious) advice on how to make n of the scientific literature, so we’ve asked a dozen scientists at different career stages and in a broad range of fields to tell us how they do it. Although it is clear that reading scientific papers becomes easier with experience, the stumbling blocks are real, and it is up to each scientist to identify and apply the techniques that work best for them. The respons have been edited for clarity and brevity.
Do you have your own tips or other questions you’d lik e answered? Leave them in the comments ction.史上最严高考
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How do you approach reading a paper?
I start by reading the abstract. Then, I skim the introduction and flip through the article to look at the figures. I try to identify the most prominent one or two figures, and I really make sure I understand what
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's going on in them. Then, I read the conclusion/summary. Only when I have done that will I go back into the technical details to clarify any questions I might have.
- Jes Shanahan, master's candidate in astronomy at Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut
Then, if the authors' rearch is similar to my own, I e if their relevant data match our findings or if there are any inconsistencies. If there are, I think about what could be causing them. Additionally, I think about what would happen in our model if we ud the same methods as they did and what we could learn from that. Sometimes, it is also important to pay attention to why the authors decided to conduct an experiment in a certain way. Did the authors u an obscure test instead of a routine assay, and why would they do this?2013年职称英语考试用书
- Jeremy C. Borniger, doctoral candidate in neuroscience at Ohio State University, Columbus
I always start with title and abstract. That tells me whether or not it’s an article I’m interested in and whether I’ll actually be able to understand it—both scientifically and linguistically. I then read the introduction so that I can understand the question being framed, and jump right to the figures and tables so I can get a feel for the data. I then read the discussion to get an idea of how the paper fits into the general body of knowledge.
ifwhether的区别I pay attention to acknowledgement of limitations and proper inference of data. Some people stretch their claims more than others, and that can be a red flag for me. I also put on my epidemiologist hat so that I can try to make sure the study design is adequate to actually test the hypothes being examined.
As I go deeper into the argument framing, figures, and discussion, I also think about which pieces are exciting and new, which ones are biologically or logically relevant, and which ones are most supported by the literature. I also consider which pieces fit with my pre-existing hypothes and rearch questions.
- Kevin Boehnke, doctoral candidate in environmental health sciences at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
My reading strategy depends on the paper. Sometimes I start by skimming through to e how much might be relevant. If it is directly applicable to my current topic, I’ll read the paper cloly, apart from the introduction that is probably already familiar. But I always try to figure out if there are particular places or figures that I need to pay clo attention to, and then I go and read the related information in the results and discussion.fatalerror
I also check if there are references that I may be interested in. Sometimes I am curious to e who in the field has—or more likely has not—been referenced, to e whether the authors are choosing to ignore certain aspects of the rearch. I often find that the supplementary figures actually offer the most curious and interesting results, especially if the results relate to parts of the field that the authors did not reference or if they are unclear or unhelpful to their interpretation of the overall story.
- Gary McDowell, postdoctoral fellow in developmental biology at Tufts University
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研究生考试什么时候开始报名in Medford, Massachutts, and visiting scholar at Boston College
When reading papers, it helps me to have a writing task so that I am being an active reader instead of letting my eyes glaze over mountains of text only to forget everything I just read. So for example, when I read for background information, I will save informative ntences from each article about a specific topic in a Word document. I'll write comments along the way about new ideas I got or questions I need to explore further. Then, in the future, I’ll only need to read this document instead of re-reading all the individual papers.
Likewi, when I want to figure out how to conduct a particular experiment, I create a handy table in Excel summarizing how a variety of rearch teams went about doing a particular experiment.
- Lina A. Colucci, doctoral candidate at the Harvard-MIT Health Sciences and Technology program
z开头的英文名I usually start with the abstract, which gives me a brief snapshot of what the study is all about. Then I read the entire article, leaving the methods to the end unless I can't make n of the results or I'm unfamiliar with the experiments.
The results and methods ctions allow you to pull apart a paper to ensure it stands up to scientific rigor. Always think about the type of experiments performed, and whether the are the most appropriate to address the question propod. Ensure that the authors have included relevant and sufficient numbers of controls. Often, conclusions can also be bad on a limited number of samples, which limits their significance.
I like to print out the paper and highlight the most relevant information, so on a quick rescan I can be reminded of the major points. Most relevant points would be things that change your thinking about your rearch topic or give you new ideas and directions.
- Lachlan Gray, deputy head of the HIV Neuropathogenesis Lab at the Burnet Institute and adjunct rearch fellow in the Department of Infectious Dia at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia
What I choo to read is bad on relation to my rearch areas and things that are generating lots of interest and discussion becau they are driving the way we do psychology, or science more widely, in new directions. Most often, what I am trying to get out of the papers is issues of methodology, experimental design, and statistical analysis. And so for me, the most important ction is first what the authors did (methods) and cond what they found (results).
