Do you have any advice for how not to get overwhelmed when reading scientific literature, mainly primary research articles? I have to present one at the end of this month for in order to graduate from University and I'm trying to read through and understand it, but every couple of lines I start having a miniature panic attack because I feel as if I don't understand ANYTHING that I am reading
BOY HAVE YOU COME TO RIGHT PLACE BC I READ SCIENTIFIC PAPERS EVERY. SINGLE. DAY. /cries a bit
Don’t read the abstract first thing. I know a lot of people do, but that’s a big mistake if you’re not a super duper level 100 science genius. If you read the abstract without knowing the science really well, it’s going to sound like gibberish soon. Read the abstract last, because it serves as a good summary.
Instead, start with the introduction. This will give you the background information you need, and it always starts out very broad.
Skip the methods part for now. Read the Results after you read the intro, and refer back to the Methods section if you don’t know what some assay is, how the mice were fed, etc. But sometimes the methods section isn’t very helpful since they go into too much detail. That leads me to..
Don’t know something? Look it up! So you come across something like “aneuploidy”, and you have no idea what it means. Don’t try to gather information from context clues; just straight up Google it, or ask someone who knows. This is the most important thing. No one is ever going to understand everything in a paper (unless they wrote it, of course). Even the top scientists have to Google stuff all the time when reading other papers. Sometimes, you can even refer back to the references in the back of the paper for answers.
Jot down notes. Once you find out what aneuploidy is, write it down on the margin of the paper so you can refer back to it. Maybe even draw a small diagram too as an example.
Annotate the figures. The figures are very very very important. They’re what tells the story. If you understand everything in the figure–the question asked, the method used, what the x- and y-axes mean, etc, what the result was–then you will understand the entire paper. So scribble away. Draw arrows. Write notes. Circle things. Define acronyms. Color code stuff. This is what all the primary papers I read look like when it comes to figures:
(Also pay attention to the Figure legends. Sometimes they’ll tell you extra information)
Explain the figures out loud. If you can explain it in your own words, you’ve got it down! You’re going to have to do this for your presentation anyway.
If it helps, write down important observations/figure summaries on a separate piece of paper so you have something you can quickly reference when putting together your presentation.
As far as the presentation goes, I like to create my slides in this order: Title, Background, Hypothesis, Questions Asked (basically a summary of what they wanted to find), Question #1 (which is essentially what Figure 1 should be about), (Additional background if necessary), Method(s) used to answer Question #1, Figures that answer Question #1, Question #1 conclusion, Question #2, etc, etc, until finally, Conclusion, Future Goals. You may have a different format, but just throwing out the one I use.
You can do it! The trick to reading scientific literature is really… Google/ask questions for things you don’t know, and really understand the figures. And with anything that’s hard at first, practice will soon make it easier :) Good luck! If you need help with the specific paper, you can send me the first author’s name, title, and year published and I can see if I can help you with anything :)
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