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Rancaniello Twiv: How to read a scientific paper

Firestormm

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I am shoving this up and plan to return to it to listen/read/watch when I get the time. Just the kind of thing I hope I would benefit from - as science papers to me might as well be written in Greek (not Latin as I might just about cope with that!).

It was linked to in a recent episode - I missed it when it was produced in 2012 - but it will still be worth a look I am sure. I do like Twiv :)

How to read a scientific paper

6 April 2012

On episode #169 of This Week in Virology we had a good discussion about how to read a scientific paper. Many individuals have asked about making this into a separate audio file, so here it is.

Click the arrow above to play, or right-click this link to download our thoughts on how to read a scientific paper (22 MB .mp3, 30 minutes).

Transcript of this discussion (pdf).

Epidemiologist Michael Walsh has shared a PowerPoint presentation on this topic (482 KB PowerPoint file).
 

WillowJ

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WA, USA
MichaelWalsh said:
Do they state the hypothesis? More than that, do they clearly state a measurable-testable hypothesis?

If you are stating the hypothesis at the end of the introduction and you say, we sought to evaluate the relationship between job-related stress and cardiovascular disease. That is not a measurable-testable hypothesis because you haven’t even defined your exposure or outcome with that.

I think that is a critical thing to look for, is a clear statement of a measurable and testable hypothesis.
 
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WillowJ

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RichCondit said:
The key to me is that it doesn't matter what they say, what matter are the actual data that are in the figures and in the tables. To me the focus is on that.

You look at a figure and your job is to understand exactly what the methods were in order to generate the data in that figure.

Then your job is to understand exactly what the data are. You have these black blobs, what are they? Is that radioactivity, is it a Western blot, what is it? If there are numbers, where do the numbers come from?

Understand the data and then understand the interpretation and then understand the extrapolation from that.