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How to read and understand a scientific paper: a guide for non-scientists

blogs.lse.ac.uk

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Re: How to read and understand a scientific paper: a guide for non-scientists

#31

Post by Denvercoder9 »

nonbel wrote: post #24

There is a difference between reading and studying a paper. Many papers I just check the abstract for claims of A causes/correlates B (ie it is a "headline" claim), and look for a scatter plot of A vs B (it is missing). Then I do ctrl-F "blind" (can't find it), ctrl-F "significance" (see p-value with nearby text indicating it has been misinterpreted). Boom, paper done in under a minute. There is really no reason to s…

This only works for a very small subset of studies in a subset of scientific fields.

Re: How to read and understand a scientific paper: a guide for non-scientists

#32

Post by semi-extrinsic »

apo wrote: post #22
burkaman wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They aren't shortcuts for the lazy, they're shortcuts for non-scientists who aren't capable of fully evaluating the science alone. If you're capable of objectively peer reviewing a paper, you're not the audience of this article.

> They aren't shortcuts for the lazy, they're shortcuts for non-scientists who aren't capable of fully evaluating the science alone. It's a shortcut fraught with potential for deception, as even a casual glance through a site like Retraction Watch will demonstrate: http://retractionwatch.com/ I'm not sure what you mean by "evaluating the science." A scientific paper should present a hypothesis, the author's best atte…

While we may find the high profile cases featured on Retraction Watch mainly in high impact journals, that's precisely because unscrupulous people deem these journals worth it to cheat to get into. Nobody cheats to get their paper into the International Journal of Architecture, Engineering and Nursing Science - because it and it's ilk are utter pieces of crap that will accept anything, up to and including randomly-generated text and pro-Sri-Lanka-highly-racist-UFO-conspiracies (real example). Teaching laypeople to avoid these is a very good idea.

Re: How to read and understand a scientific paper: a guide for non-scientists

#33

Post by danielalmeida »

syphilis2 wrote: post #25
danielalmeida wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because they are not writing for non-scientists.

I understood that the steps are followed by scientists such as the author, it's just the guide that is intended for non-scientists.

Not necessarily. IMO, she proposes a specific way of "thinking" about the paper's content (I use another approach [1]). Papers are written following a certain structure because many people think it's a better way of presenting the ideas in detail/with the necessary rigor (that's what other "scientists" in the field would expect). For example, no researcher expects a five-sentence summary of the background. Personally, I expect an explanation of the relevant concepts/techniques and some sort of analysis of how existing work relates to the paper (instead of a list of related papers). At least in software engineering, many papers state the research questions explicitly, i.e., they would be identified if you read the paper from beginning to end. They tend to have a "results" section as well, so summarizing the results myself would be an intellectual exercise. Once you understand how papers are usually structured, you pick up on many of those things as you go (I mean, as you simply read the paper as the author intended).

On a side note, I'd say that many researchers don't do a good job of conveying their ideas clearly (it gets worse with conference presentations). It won't really matter in what order you try to read their papers.

[1] http://blizzard.cs.uwaterloo.ca/keshav/home/Papers/data/07/p...

Re: How to read and understand a scientific paper: a guide for non-scientists

#34

Post by danielalmeida »

pitt1980 wrote: post #30
danielalmeida wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because they are not writing for non-scientists.

all scientist were non-scientists first though, correct? Look, I get that there's some natural professional context and lingo that goes into these things, but for all the angst that goes into what esteem that population at large holds up the science community making their work more accessible to both novices and interested outsiders would be a nice step in the right direction

I agree with you. To put it simply, papers are optimized for the scientific community and making them "more accessible" to outsiders has a cost. I'd settle for better writing and presentations within the scientific community for now. If you ever find researchers that blog about their research in simple terms, I think it's safe to assume they're using their personal time to do that (I know of very few; Andy Ko [1] comes to mind).

[1] https://medium.com/bits-and-behavior

Re: How to read and understand a scientific paper: a guide for non-scientists

#35

Post by gogoengie »

glup wrote: post #20

I don't understand the opposition to abstracts: dense means high information content, so if you know the field you can learn a whole lot (like whether you should read this paper or another one).

I also find that briefly paraphrasing the abstract helps me understand my own expectations of the paper. Even if the paraphrase is wrong, it's still a good primer for switching into active engagement instead of passive absorption. Also, when you finish the paper you can review and correct your initial impressions; sort of like tutoring yourself (which personally I find helpful from both perspectives, tutor and tutee).

Re: How to read and understand a scientific paper: a guide for non-scientists

#36

Post by rifung »

tryitnow wrote: post #13
syphilis2 wrote: post #9

Why don't the authors do these 11 steps for us?

Because their goal is to get published so that they can move along in their careers. Their target audience doesn't require these 11 steps. My question would be why don't donors and taxpayers (who are funding research) demand that researchers do these 11 steps?

> My question would be why don't donors and taxpayers (who are funding research) demand that researchers do these 11 steps?

Because the overwhelming majority of taxpayers do not read them or care to. Also, even though a taxpayer may not read papers, they hopefully still see the value in the progression of science, and allowing scientists to assume a certain level of background to the audience of their paper probably allows them to use their time on science.

Perhaps there's an opportunity for a motivated individual or group of individuals to make something to parse papers and help make it easier to read for those who don't have the proper background?

Re: How to read and understand a scientific paper: a guide for non-scientists

#37

Post by rifung »

pitt1980 wrote: post #30
danielalmeida wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because they are not writing for non-scientists.

all scientist were non-scientists first though, correct? Look, I get that there's some natural professional context and lingo that goes into these things, but for all the angst that goes into what esteem that population at large holds up the science community making their work more accessible to both novices and interested outsiders would be a nice step in the right direction

I think that they often do when it's appropriate, but the way they make them more accessible isn't by changing their papers but by giving talks or presentations that are less technical (like TED talks for example).

This seems like a good approach in my humble opinion.

Re: How to read and understand a scientific paper: a guide for non-scientists

#38

Post by kkylin »

closed wrote: post #7

I love how simple and clear this post is. As a kind of weird aside, if anyone ever emailed me about any of my journal articles, I would 100% respond to them (assuming they weren't a machine). I think most of my colleagues would do the same (except for articles featured in a newspaper, which might garner a lot of weird emails).

Me too, most especially if the email is from a student. I imagine the same goes for many of us who write research papers.

Re: How to read and understand a scientific paper: a guide for non-scientists

#39

Post by eanzenberg »

apo wrote: post #5

Sensible advice overall, but I completely disagree with these: > Before you begin reading, take note of the authors and their institutional affiliations. and > Beware of questionable journals. Institutional affiliation and journal imprimatur should have no bearing in science. These are shortcuts for the lazy, and they introduce bias into evaluation of the paper's contents. Even more than that, dispensing advice along…

I check these all the time. It's not my job to verify who was first to publish and who deserves credit for novelty. There are groups that do that which divy up acknowledgment. It's my job to get up to speed with as accurate information as I can with the limited time I have.

Re: How to read and understand a scientific paper: a guide for non-scientists

#40

Post by jacobolus »

startupdiscuss wrote: post #2

This is a good guide, but I will tell you a trick that is faster, easier, and more effective: read 2 or 3 papers. All that effort you would put into doing these steps? Instead, read 1 or 2 other papers that the author refers to in the beginning. Science is a conversation. When you read the other papers, even if you don't understand them at first, you will get a sense of the conversation. Also, some writers are abysma…

Another trick: use google scholar or a similar citation graph.

Unfortunately the citation graph sites won’t show all the outgoing references from a particular paper (I assume because they’re afraid of copyright issues?) but looking at the incoming references for a paper can be very useful. If you can find an old classic paper in some subject, then most major later papers will have cited it, so you can start from google scholar search’s list of references to the classic paper, which will be sorted by citation count. Doing keyword searches within such a list of references can often quickly surface the most important papers on a subject, especially if you go a couple hops into the “cited by” graph. Often among the most-cited papers is some kind of review paper with a clear explanation of the context, overview of the literature, and extended definitions of important terms.

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