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READING SCIENTIFIC ARTICLES
Robert Siegel, The Vaccine Revolution
https://web.stanford.edu/~siegelr/readingsci.htm
There are many approaches to reading scientific articles. Those of you who have had significant experience reading such articles will have developed a style of you own. For those of you who have not, I will discuss one approach.
One does not read a journal article like a novel or a newspaper article. There are several reasons for this:
1. The information is too dense to comprehend it with a simple reading.
2. You may be interested in a specific aspect of the article rather than the entire thing. The special structure of such articles allows one to find the desired section more easily.
3. Understanding of one part of an article will often require backward or forward reference to another part of the article.
For adequate understanding of an article, you should be prepared to read an article at least two, three, or four times. You will often be amazed to discover that what seemed completely incomprehensible on the first reading appears to make perfect sense on subsequent readings.
Phase I: Screening the article.
Phase II: Getting the punch line.
Phase III: Understanding the approach.
Phase IV: First reading.
Phase V: Increasing understanding
Task 1. Study the advice on how to reada scientific article and answer the questions in italics.
Phase I: Screening the article.
1. Read the title once fast looking for key words. Read the title slowly until it makes sense.
Predict the field of science and the topic of the article.
Does the subject , expert systems, look familiar to you?
What does ESTHER mean? Can you find a quick answer in the abstract or introduction?
2. Look through the authors to see if there is anyone whose name you recognize, whose work you know. This is an important process in trying to judge the quality of the data.
What countries and institutions are they from?
Why do you think the authors work in different organizations?
3. Look at the date. In the field where information is rapidly changing, the date may be all-important .
When was the article published?
Do you think that it is still topical?
4. Some articles have a brief list of key words. They are usually quite informative and should be looked at early on.
Is it a review article or an original research article?
Task 2. Study the advice on further reading of a scientific article. Do the tasks given below.
Phase II: Getting the punch line.
1) Read the abstractonce fast looking for key words. Read the abstract slowly until it makes sense.
The widely used structure of research article abstracts is the following ( Alexander et al, 2008. EAP Essentials):
| Move | Function | Examples from Larichev et al, 2001 |
| Introduction | Establishes the context of the paper and motivates the research ( by indicating the limitation of current research, e.g. signaled by however) | |
| Purpose | Indicated the purpose and outlines the intention behind the paper | |
| Method | Provides information on design, procedures, assumptions, data, etc. | |
| Results | States the main findings, the argument or what was accomplished. | |
| Conclusion | Interprets or extends the results, draws inferences, points of implications. |
2) Read introduction. The introduction is often the easiest part of an article to read. In some cases, it is also the most informative - not so much in terms of presenting new information, but in consolidating background information. Some authors will also present the punch line of their research in a way that is easier to understand than the way it is presented in the abstract.
Task 3. Rhetorical functions can be classified into three main macro-functions:
Describe: narrative; instructions; process
Explain: comparison and contrast; definition and classification; cause and effect; change and development
Persuade: problem and solution; argument and support; evidence and conclusion
Read the introduction to Larichev et al, 2001 and identify rhetorical functions of its parts:
| Organization of the text | Annotated text | Functions (choose from the list) |
| Background to the problem | 1. In recent years in Russia there was a trend toward fast increasing of a number of poisoning cases for adults as well as for children ___________________ 2. This situation makes more urgent and important the problem of poisoning diagnostics and treatment____________ _______ | comparison, contrast, narrative, change, development, solution, instruction. |
| Problem | 3.A considerable change in the acute poisonings pattern has occurred in the last decade_____________________ 4. Approximately one half of all poisoning cases are connected with drug poisoning_____________________ 5. Pharmaceuticals (particularly psychotic drugs), alcohol and surrogates replaced as the main poisonings causes acetic acid and other corrosives, pesticides and other household agents_______________ 6. But unfortunately the majority of physicians working in the ambulance service and in hospitals don’t know enough about the reasons of intoxications, their diagnostics and treatment___________________ | comparison, definition, classification, effect, cause, change. |
| Proposed general solution to the problem | 7. The critical situation with a large number of the intoxications could be significantly softened by the availability of good expertise in hospitals and in ambulance cars___________ 8. Therefore, the important aim of the research is development of an expert system based on the knowledge of experienced physicians__________ | problem, solution, cause, evaluation, sequence, evidence, effect, argument. |
| Evaluation of the solutions | 9. Such system could be applied as a useful source of advice for young physicians and physicians of different specializations_________________ | positive evaluation, negative evaluation, |
3) The introduction will often cite many of the references. This is an excellent time to begin looking at them.
Task 4. Answer the questions in italics:
Do the authors cite their own works? Write their numbers from the list of references.
Do the cited references consider mostly expert systems in general or their application in medicine?
Phase III: Understanding the approach
1) Peruse the figures and tables. You will not understand them this first time through but this will help you know what to look for when you actually read the article.
Task 5. Look at figure 1 and describe it in pairs after having answered the questions.The description on p3 will help you.
Fig1
1. What is presented on Figure one?
2. What does each node of tree represent?
3. Why are there only two branches emanating from each node?
4. What is the minimum number of questions needed to arrive to a conclusion?
Figure 2 is the diagram presenting the principle modules of ESTHER system,whose description constitutes the main part of Results section.
Without reading the results part, give a general description of the picture.
Phase IV: First reading
2) Skim the abstract and the introduction once again. At this point you should be able to have an adequate understanding of them.
3) Skim the methodssection. The methods section will need to be studied carefully only if you intend to use some of the procedures in your research.
We will use this section of the article (p.2) to work with academic vocabulary.
Date: 2016-03-03; view: 1733
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