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Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder
How to Read a Scientific Article
Three tips for a faster–and less boring–read
Posted August 7, 2018
Scientific literature is quoted left and right these days–and often incorrectly. This leads audiences to draw false conclusions or assume that the research supports a cause it actually doesn't. If you're an engaged citizen who wants to evaluate scientific claims for yourself (or a student trying to do a report, or a beginning researcher, etc.), but don't have a scientist's training, you may have tried to read research articles–only to find them incomprehensible.
In situations like this, what are you to do? Well, ideally, scientific reports should be more readable than they currently are. But unfortunately scientists tend to prefer precision over readability in their use of language, making it hard for them to spread and popularize their findings. Until scientific writing becomes more accessible, we just have to learn how to read it.
During my career so far as a doctor and a researcher, I've looked through numerous scientific articles and authored some as well. Here are a few pointers I've picked up along the way that may help you read them more easily.
Note: The tips below refer specifically to original research articles that appear in peer-reviewed journals–that is, reports on the results of new experiments written by scientists and critiqued by other scientists. These tips may not apply to reviews, commentaries, and other articles types that may appear in such journals.
Tip 1: Understand the structure.
Science can be a creative endeavor, but the structure of a scientific article isn't. Once you've seen the structure of one article, you've pretty much seen the structure of them all. It goes like this:
A. Abstract - A short summary of the experiment, usually divided into four sections: background, methods, results, and conclusions. These sections are essentially condensed versions of B through E below, designed to highlight the most notable points.
B. Introduction - Background on why the research question is interesting and important. Usually, this segment starts out very broadly ("PTSD is a potentially debilitating disease...") and becomes more and more specific to the subject of the paper with every paragraph ("...and this is why we want to test whether Drug X is helpful for PTSD").
C. Methods - Details about how the experiment was conducted. Information about who or what was studied, which tests were performed, how the data was statistically analyzed, etc., all go here.
D. Results - What they found out in the study. The raw numbers are reported, but not interpreted in detail until the next segment. Tables and figures are most likely located here.
E. Discussion - Putting it all into context. Results are summarized
("Drug X was found to work for Symptom Y but not Symptom Z..."), then interpreted ("This may be because..."). The authors emphasize how this work improves our knowledge of the field. They usually end with some comments on the study's strengths and weaknesses, followed by suggestions for future studies in related areas.
F. References - A list of previous studies and other works that were cited in the article.
With this in mind, two things may become clear to you. First, that scientific articles can be quite repetitive, with multiple sections telling the same story in different ways. And second, that because of this repetitive nature, it's often not necessary to read everything to understand a study's main points.
Which leads us to my second tip:
Tip 2: Don't read every word.
It took me a while to figure this one out, because I, like many other conscientious, type-A learners, had been taught all my life to be thorough with my reading. This meant reading from beginning to end and not skipping around. It turns out, however, that that advice is much more applicable to novels than to scientific writing. When you read a scientific article, you're reading for information, not for fun. As such, your aim is to extract the information you need and then to stop reading–not to soak in every word, which would be a huge time sink, not to mention incredibly boring. (Remember, I've written several of these, and still I can sympathize.)
This is where the article's predictable structure comes in handy. You know exactly where all the information can be found, so you can jump around easily. Start with the abstract, since that's the authors' attempt to do your work for you. If you find what you need there, you're done! Otherwise, skip down to the results and discussion. If you're a numbers person, the results section contains the raw data you need to draw conclusions. If you're not, the discussion explains it for you. Go over the introduction only if you need additional background on the topic of the experiment. And leave the methods section alone unless you really want to know the study's technical aspects.
Tip 3: Digest information even faster with tables and figures.
They say that a picture is worth a thousand words–or, translated to scientific articles, tables and figures are worth many pages of text. If you're good with reading tables, graphs, and the like, then you may be able to find all the information you need using the paper's visual aids and skip everything else. Don't worry if you're not, though–some visuals are just plain confusing. In those cases, you can still lean on the written-out results and discussion.
Those are just a few tricks of the trade. They may not make reading scientific articles more fun, but they might just make it faster. And the more articles you read, the more quickly you'll be able to understand them. Good luck with the process!
