jennifer raffFrom vaccinations to climate change, getting scientific discipline wrong has very real consequences. But journal articles, a principal way science is communicated in academia, are a dissimilar format to newspaper manufactures or blogs and require a level of skill and undoubtedly a greater amount of patience. Hither Jennifer Raffhas prepared a helpful guide for non-scientists on how to read a scientific newspaper. These steps and tips will be useful to anyone interested in the presentation of scientific findings and enhance important points for scientists to consider with their ain writing practice.

My post, The truth virtually vaccinations: Your dr. knows more than the University of Google sparked a very lively discussion, with comments from several people trying to persuade me (and the other readers) that their paper disproved everything that I'd been saying. While I encourage you lot to become read the comments and contribute your own, here I want to focus on the much larger issue that this debate raised: what constitutes scientific authorisation?

It's not just a fun academic problem. Getting the scientific discipline wrong has very real consequences. For example, when a community doesn't vaccinate children because they're afraid of "toxins" and recall that prayer (or diet, practice, and "clean living") is enough to prevent infection, outbreaks happen.

"Be skeptical. But when you lot become proof, accept proof." –Michael Specter

What constitutes plenty proof? Plain everyone has a different answer to that question. Simply to grade a truly educated opinion on a scientific discipline, you need to become familiar with current research in that field. And to practice that, you have to read the "primary research literature" (often just called "the literature"). You might have tried to read scientific papers before and been frustrated by the dense, stilted writing and the unfamiliar jargon. I remember feeling this way!  Reading and understanding enquiry papers is a skill which every single doctor and scientist has had to larn during graduate schoolhouse.  Yous tin can learn it as well, but similar any skill it takes patience and practice.

I want to help people go more than scientifically literate, and so I wrote this guide for how a layperson can arroyo reading and understanding a scientific research paper. It'southward advisable for someone who has no background any in scientific discipline or medicine, and based on the assumption that he or she is doing this for the purpose of getting abasic understanding of a paper and deciding whether or non it'due south a reputable study.

The type of scientific paper I'm discussing here is referred to every bit a principal inquiry commodity. It's a peer-reviewed report of new research on a specific question (or questions). Another useful type of publication is a review article. Review articles are also peer-reviewed, and don't nowadays new information, but summarize multiple primary enquiry articles, to give a sense of the consensus, debates, and unanswered questions inside a field.  (I'm non going to say much more than about them hither, but exist cautious about which review articles yous read. Recall that they are only a snapshot of the inquiry at the time they are published.  A review article on, say, genome-wide clan studies from 2001 is not going to be very informative in 2013. So much inquiry has been washed in the intervening years that the field has inverse considerably).

Before you begin: some general advice

Reading a scientific paper is a completely different process than reading an article nigh scientific discipline in a blog or newspaper. Non only practise you read the sections in a unlike club than they're presented, only y'all also have to accept notes, read it multiple times, and probably go wait upwardly other papers for some of the details. Reading a single paper may accept you a very long fourth dimension at beginning. Be patient with yourself. The process volition get much faster as you gain experience.

Most chief inquiry papers will be divided into the post-obit sections: Abstract, Introduction, Methods, Results, and Conclusions/Interpretations/Discussion. The order volition depend on which periodical information technology's published in. Some journals have additional files (called Supplementary Online Information) which comprise of import details of the enquiry, but are published online instead of in the article itself (make sure you don't skip these files).

Before yous begin reading, take annotation of the authors and their institutional affiliations. Some institutions (east.g. University of Texas) are well-respected; others (eastward.g. the Discovery Found) may appear to be legitimate inquiry institutions simply are actually agenda-driven. Tip: g oogle "Discovery Institute" to see why you don't desire to utilise it every bit a scientific authority on evolutionary theory.

Also take note of the periodical in which information technology'southward published. Reputable (biomedical) journals will be indexed by Pubmed. [EDIT: Several people have reminded me that not-biomedical journals won't be on Pubmed, and they're absolutely correct! (thanks for catching that, I apologize for being sloppy here). Check out Spider web of Scientific discipline for a more consummate index of science journals. And delight feel free to share other resources in the comments!]  Beware of questionable journals.

Every bit yous read, write downwardly every unmarried word that you don't understand. You're going to have to look them all upwardly (yes, every one. I know information technology's a full pain. Merely you lot won't empathise the newspaper if you don't understand the vocabulary. Scientific words have extremely precise meanings).

how to read a sci paper

Step-past-step instructions for reading a master research article

1. Begin past reading the introduction, not the abstract.

The abstract is that dense first paragraph at the very outset of a paper. In fact, that's often the just part of a paper that many not-scientists read when they're trying to build a scientific argument. (This is a terrible practise—don't do it.).  When I'thou choosing papers to read, I decide what's relevant to my interests based on a combination of the championship and abstract. Merely when I've got a drove of papers assembled for deep reading, I ever read the abstract concluding. I practise this because abstracts comprise a succinct summary of the unabridged paper, and I'm concerned near inadvertently condign biased by the authors' interpretation of the results.

2. Place the Big QUESTION.

Non "What is this paper about", but "What problem is this unabridged field trying to solve?"

This helps yous focus on why this research is beingness done.  Look closely for evidence of agenda-motivated research.

3. Summarize the groundwork in five sentences or less.

Hither are some questions to guide y'all:

What work has been done before in this field to answer the Big QUESTION? What are the limitations of that work? What, co-ordinate to the authors, needs to exist done next?

The v sentences part is a piffling arbitrary, but it forces you lot to exist concise and actually think about the context of this enquiry. You lot need to be able to explain why this enquiry has been done in order to understand it.

four. Identify the SPECIFIC QUESTION(S)

What exactly are the authors trying to answer with their research? At that place may be multiple questions, or just one. Write them down.  If information technology'south the kind of research that tests one or more than naught hypotheses, place it/them.

Not sure what a null hypothesis is? Get read this, then go back to my terminal postal service and read one of the papers that I linked to (like this i) and try to identify the zero hypotheses in it. Go on in listen that not every paper volition test a nada hypothesis.

v. Identify the approach

What are the authors going to do to answer the SPECIFIC QUESTION(Southward)?

half dozen. Now read the methods section. Describe a diagram for each experiment, showing exactly what the authors did.

I mean literally describe it. Include every bit much detail as you need to fully empathise the piece of work.  As an example, hither is what I drew to sort out the methods for a paper I read today (Battaglia et al. 2013: "The first peopling of South America: New evidence from Y-chromosome haplogroup Q"). This is much less detail than yous'd probably need, because information technology's a paper in my specialty and I use these methods all the fourth dimension.  But if you were reading this, and didn't happen to know what "procedure data with reduced-median method using Network" means, you'd need to look that up.

battaglia-et-al-methodsParadigm credit: author

Y'all don't need to sympathize the methods in enough item to replicate the experiment—that's something reviewers have to practice—only you're not set to move on to the results until y'all can explicate the basics of the methods to someone else.

seven. Read the results section. Write one or more paragraphs to summarize the results for each experiment, each effigy, and each table. Don't yet try to decide what the results mean, just write down what they are.

You'll find that, particularly in adept papers, the majority of the results are summarized in the figures and tables. Pay careful attention to them!  You may also need to go to the Supplementary Online Information file to observe some of the results.

 Information technology is at this point where difficulties can arise if statistical tests are employed in the paper and you don't have enough of a groundwork to understand them. I can't teach y'all stats in this postal service, only here, hither, and here are some basic resource to help you.  I STRONGLY advise you to become familiar with them.

Things to pay attention to in the results department:

  • Any fourth dimension the words "meaning" or "non-significant" are used. These have precise statistical meanings. Read more about this hither.
  • If there are graphs, do they have mistake bars on them? For certain types of studies, a lack of confidence intervals is a major red flag.
  • The sample size. Has the study been conducted on 10, or 10,000 people? (For some research purposes, a sample size of 10 is sufficient, merely for most studies larger is improve).

8. Exercise the results answer the SPECIFIC QUESTION(S)? What do you think they mean?

Don't move on until yous take thought about this. It's okay to modify your mind in lite of the authors' interpretation—in fact you probably will if you're all the same a beginner at this kind of assay—but it's a really good habit to beginning forming your own interpretations before y'all read those of others.

nine. Read the determination/give-and-take/Estimation section.

What do the authors think the results mean? Do you agree with them? Can you come up with any culling way of interpreting them? Do the authors identify whatsoever weaknesses in their own study? Practice you lot encounter any that the authors missed? (Don't presume they're infallible!) What do they propose to do as a next step? Practice you agree with that?

ten. Now, become back to the beginning and read the abstract.

Does it match what the authors said in the paper? Does it fit with your interpretation of the paper?

11. FINAL Stride: (Don't neglect doing this) What practice other researchers say about this newspaper?

Who are the (acknowledged or self-proclaimed) experts in this item field? Exercise they have criticisms of the written report that you oasis't thought of, or do they mostly support it?

Here's a place where I exercise recommend yous use google! But practise it last, and then you are better prepared to think critically virtually what other people say.

(12. This step may be optional for y'all, depending on why you lot're reading a particular paper. Simply for me, it's critical! I go through the "Literature cited" section to see what other papers the authors cited. This allows me to better place the important papers in a detail field, see if the authors cited my ain papers (KIDDING!….mostly), and find sources of useful ideas or techniques.)

UPDATE: If yous would like to see an instance of how to read a science paper using this framework, you can discover one here.

I gratefully acknowledge Professors José Bonner and Beak Saxton for teaching me how to critically read and analyze scientific papers using this method. I'k honored to have the risk to pass forth what they taught me.

I've written a shorter version of this guide for teachers to manus out to their classes. If you'd like a PDF, shoot me an electronic mail: jenniferraff (at) utexas (dot) edu. For further comments and additional questions on this guide, please run across the Comments Section on the original post.

This piece originally appeared on the author's personal web log and is reposted with permission.

Featured paradigm credit: Scientists in a laboratory of the Academy of La Rioja by Urcomunicacion (Wikimedia CC BY3.0)

Notation: This article gives the views of the authors, and not the position of the LSE Impact weblog, nor of the London School of Economics. Please review our Comments Policy if you have whatever concerns on posting a annotate below.

Nearly the Author

Jennifer Raff (Indiana University—dual Ph.D. in genetics and bioanthropology) is an assistant professor in the Department of Anthropology, University of Kansas, manager and Master Investigator of the KU Laboratory of Homo Population Genomics, and banana director of KU's Laboratory of Biological Anthropology. She is also a research chapter with the University of Texas anthropological genetics laboratory. She is keenly interested in public outreach and scientific literacy, writing most topics in science and pseudoscience for her blog (violentmetaphors.com), the Huffington Mail, and for the Social Evolution Forum.

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