Chapter 7 Section 1 Guided Reading and Review Perfect Competition
To form a truly educated stance on a scientific discipline, you demand to become familiar with current research in that field. And to be able to distinguish between good and bad interpretations of research, you have to be willing and able to read the chief enquiry literature for yourself. Reading and agreement research papers is a skill that every single doctor and scientist has had to learn during graduate school. Yous can learn it too, simply like any skill information technology takes patience and practice.
Reading a scientific newspaper is a completely dissimilar process from reading an article nearly science in a blog or newspaper. Not merely practice you read the sections in a different society than they're presented, merely yous also accept to take notes, read it multiple times, and probably go look up other papers in society to empathise some of the details. Reading a unmarried paper may take you a very long fourth dimension at first, but be patient with yourself. The process will go much faster as you gain experience.
The type of scientific paper I'grand discussing hither is referred to as a master enquiry article. Information technology's a peer-reviewed report of new research on a specific question (or questions). Most articles will exist divided into the following sections: abstract, introduction, methods, results, and conclusions/interpretations/discussion.
Before you begin reading a newspaper, take notation of the authors and their institutional affiliations. Some institutions (e.k., University of Texas) are well-respected; others may appear to be legitimate enquiry institutions but are actually agenda-driven. Also take note of the journal in which it's published. Be cautious of articles from questionable journals, or sites like Natural News, that might resemble peer-reviewed scientific journals simply aren't.
Stride-by-Step Instructions for Reading a Main Enquiry Commodity
one. Begin by reading the introduction, not the abstract.
The abstract is that dense showtime paragraph at the very beginning of a paper. In fact, that's frequently the only office of a paper that many not-scientists read when they're trying to build a scientific statement. (This is a terrible exercise. Don't exercise it.) I always read the abstruse final, because it contains a succinct summary of the entire paper, and I'm concerned about inadvertently becoming biased past the authors' interpretation of the results.
2. Identify the big question.
Non "What is this newspaper well-nigh?" but "What problem is this entire field trying to solve?" This helps y'all focus on why this research is beingness done. Await closely for show of agenda-motivated research.
3. Summarize the background in five sentences or less.
What work has been done before in this field to answer the big question? What are the limitations of that work? What, according to the authors, needs to be done side by side? You need to be able to succinctly explain why this research has been done in order to understand it.
4. Identify the specific question(s).
What exactly are the authors trying to answer with their research? There may be multiple questions, or just one. Write them downwardly. If it'southward the kind of research that tests one or more null hypotheses, identify it/them.
5. Identify the approach.
What are the authors going to practice to answer the specific question(due south)?
six. Read the methods section.
Describe a diagram for each experiment, showing exactly what the authors did. Include as much item as you need to fully understand the work.
vii. Read the results section.
Write one or more than paragraphs to summarize the results for each experiment, each figure, and each tabular array. Don't all the same try to determine what the results mean; just write downward what they are. Yous'll often find that results are summarized in the figures and tables. Pay careful attention to them! You may besides need to go to supplementary online information files to find some of the results. Also pay attention to:
- The words "meaning" and "non-significant." These take precise statistical meanings. Read more about this here.
viii. Decide whether the results answer the specific question(s).
What do you think they mean? Don't movement on until you accept idea virtually this. Information technology's OK to change your heed in light of the authors' interpretation -- in fact, you probably will if you lot're withal a beginner at this kind of analysis -- only it's a really skillful habit to get-go forming your own interpretations earlier yous read those of others.
nine. Read the conclusion/discussion/interpretation department.
What do the authors think the results hateful? Practice you agree with them? Can you lot come up with any alternative way of interpreting them? Practise the authors place any weaknesses in their own study? Do yous come across any that the authors missed? (Don't assume they're infallible!) What do they propose to do as a next step? Exercise you agree with that?
10. Get dorsum to the kickoff and read the abstruse.
Does it match what the authors said in the newspaper? Does it fit with your interpretation of the paper?
xi. Find out what other researchers say about the paper.
Who are the (best-selling or self-proclaimed) experts in this particular field? Exercise they take criticisms of the written report that you oasis't thought of, or practice they more often than not support it? Don't fail to do this! Here's a place where I do recommend you apply Google! But do it last, so yous are better prepared to call back critically about what other people say.
A full-length version of this post originally appeared on the writer'southward personal blog.
chaissonwayinshound.blogspot.com
Source: https://www.huffpost.com/entry/how-to-read-and-understand-a-scientific-paper_b_5501628
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