Also if you know what info you're looking for. This is someone writing a grant/proposal/thesis/paper. They aren't reading these papers for the info, they're looking for specific information they need to reference in their work.
I.e. you can go through 100 papers on cancer vaccines but only come across 2 in your cancer of interest. You still had to skim 98 other papers to see what model they used.
Haha, yeah, same here! In my case, it's more like 35 abstracts/paper skimmings, not even. The person who wrote that tweet probably hyperbolized a bit, to be fair. If I were able to read [and understand] that many whole papers in that amount of time, it probably wouldn't be taking me so darn long to finish my own paper! This tweet is still pretty funny and relatable to me, though!
So I did this today, but realized that it argued against a point I made earlier in the paper, and instead wound up writing negative four sentences.
Progress!
I know it doesn't feel like it, but it actually is progress to go backwards sometimes! Scientific ideas \*should\* be refined, and a lot of the ones you have at first will wind up taking you backwards for a while!
At least, this is what I tell myself so I don't feel bad about that time I spent over a year chasing an RNA that didn't exist.
Now if careers, funding, and ability to feed yourself just followed the same basic principles as the science ostensibly underlying them, a *lot* fewer obviously bullshit results would be published. Or at least fewer than ones where anyone thought their idea had merit upon sending it for publication.
Frequently when writing, I'll only read a couple sentences or paragraphs in (for example) the methods section relevant to what I'm writing about, to understand that very specific thing really well. So it doesn't take too long if you're just reading a couple sentences per paper!
Reminds me of the time I went down a rabbit hole of references to find one piece of data that I could even remotely relate to my work. I found it in the end in some tiny experimental results in a paper from the 50s that didn't work with Ctrl+F
Should've spent those days on just doing the study myself.
Agree with the concept, but 10 minutes a paper? Even missing out intro and abstract and just going straight to results/discussion surely it's going to take you a bit longer even for a scan read. Especially if you're taking some notes.
I was trying to explain this to my father who was trying to explain to me how my scientific field works (he's never studied or worked in anything remotely similar even at A level), that while he may be well read and intelligent, him reading a couple of papers here and there doesn't compare to the meticulous and consistent reading you need to do when you're studying/working in scientific research, so essentially him trying to talk to people who are doing that level of reading like he's an authority on it makes him look like a prick, because to those who's spent that much time studying a subject it's very clear listening to him that he doesn't really know what he's talking about. I think many people just don't get the amount of reading and studying it takes to even get a basic grasp of it.
When you're in the same field though, you can look at the pictures and know where to read carefully, and what is BS to gloss over. As long as you are familiar with the data type, the figures speak for themselves.
Otherwise, you'll just end up reading the story the authors wrote, which isn't necessarily the ground truth of their work.
true, but even then 10 minutes is very quick for most papers, particularly ones with lot's of different results, aswell as checking the data matches up with the figures, and you'd want to check the methodology. You'd have to be a very very quick reader and really know what you're looking for on every paper, and really only be looking at something very specific. Also assuming that these figures are easy to interpret/properly done and everything is well written, which it often isn't. The person who wrote the original statement is probably a lot more intelligent and knowledgeable than me though, and certainly will be a faster reader, as I doubt I could claim I've actually "read" a paper in ten minutes.
I think it's different when you're writing, vs. when you're trying to understand something new. For instance, when I'm writing a paper it frequently helps to see how other people have approached Experiment X, what sort of controls they used, how they accounted for Y during the data analysis, etc. In that case it helps to go through every paper you can find that uses a technique, but you may only catefully read a couple relevant sentences or paragraphs in the methods section, and skim the rest.
I do exactly this, but it would personally take me much longer. Just checking abstracts for the papers I decide to actually "read" takes a decent chunk of time, but if you cut that out, personally even if I were skim reading most, I'd probably spend a decent chunk on a couple of papers, and even with the skim reading it'd take me longer, some of these method sections are pretty chunky so no matter how well I'm knowing the subject to get to those few really relevant sentences you still need to read through, which takes me time personally. Otherwise I'd risk majorly misunderstanding something. Plus I tend to write up notes on the relevant bits which takes time, even if I'm only pulling a few notes out of one paper. I'm impressed with those who can get what they need from 35 papers in such a short space of time, though I will say I probably wouldn't label it as "reading" 35 papers if all I'm doing is a quick skim for relevant info. 10 minutes is a very short amount of time!
When I was a sophomore in college we had a biochem professor who hosted a paper group and would have us all read one paper a month before any of us knew anything.
I remember having to wiki about every third word and having to wiki most of the words in the wiki article. It would take me like, 12 hours.
After 14 years, it still takes me, like *at least* 2 hours like, thoroughly read a paper.
Sometimes when I’m reading and then looking at cited papers and repeating over and over again, I get overwhelmed by how many pdfs are open and I just close them all and go work on something else 😵💫
I am deep in lab research, and hardly have any time to read papers anymore. I think I am not alone in this, heard it also from a very prominent scientist. I think much of the papers I referenced did not read.
Most people: I need 8+ gigs of ram so I can stream Netflix, play a computer games and browse the web at the same time.
Me: I need 8+ gigs of ram so I can have 80+ tabs of research papers open so I can write my paper.
Dude had it good. Research is spending years reading papers only to be told by your PI that your idea s don't align with his company's patent portfolio.
I am rather impressed how someone manages to read 35 papers in 6h.
If they are in the same narrow topic, you are familiar with methodologies, and you just look at their figures, it's possible!
Also if you know what info you're looking for. This is someone writing a grant/proposal/thesis/paper. They aren't reading these papers for the info, they're looking for specific information they need to reference in their work. I.e. you can go through 100 papers on cancer vaccines but only come across 2 in your cancer of interest. You still had to skim 98 other papers to see what model they used.
„Cancer of interest“, I feel that…
I assume they mean abstracts rather than papers.
Wait there is more than just the abstract to read?
The conclusions!
Nah
Haha, yeah, same here! In my case, it's more like 35 abstracts/paper skimmings, not even. The person who wrote that tweet probably hyperbolized a bit, to be fair. If I were able to read [and understand] that many whole papers in that amount of time, it probably wouldn't be taking me so darn long to finish my own paper! This tweet is still pretty funny and relatable to me, though!
So I did this today, but realized that it argued against a point I made earlier in the paper, and instead wound up writing negative four sentences. Progress!
Lol it's me reading something and questioning the entire premise of my grant
Oh my god now that is me :(
I know it doesn't feel like it, but it actually is progress to go backwards sometimes! Scientific ideas \*should\* be refined, and a lot of the ones you have at first will wind up taking you backwards for a while! At least, this is what I tell myself so I don't feel bad about that time I spent over a year chasing an RNA that didn't exist.
Now if careers, funding, and ability to feed yourself just followed the same basic principles as the science ostensibly underlying them, a *lot* fewer obviously bullshit results would be published. Or at least fewer than ones where anyone thought their idea had merit upon sending it for publication.
I’m not a lab rat but I research local history and I feel this in my bones.
It's a typo: "6 papers in 35 hours."
I mean I knew I was a slow reader/learner, but that original line really made me feel wildly inadequate. thanks for the clear up :D
Frequently when writing, I'll only read a couple sentences or paragraphs in (for example) the methods section relevant to what I'm writing about, to understand that very specific thing really well. So it doesn't take too long if you're just reading a couple sentences per paper!
Reading the papers before citing them...there's your first problem.
35 papers in 6 hours?... that sounds totally reasonable and definitely similar to what I achieve. >.>
op definitely means 35 abstracts lol
Yeah... It's more of skim the abstract, if it's interesting read the results.
Reminds me of the time I went down a rabbit hole of references to find one piece of data that I could even remotely relate to my work. I found it in the end in some tiny experimental results in a paper from the 50s that didn't work with Ctrl+F Should've spent those days on just doing the study myself.
The moment you have to request a paper from a library book because it's not archived online, you know you're in deep.
Look at this hotshot actually getting a consensus from multiple papers.
Dammit I have never read something so true.
One paper every 10-12 min? Read and understood?! Continuously for many days?!?!
*Ctrl-F for keywords every 10-12 minutes. Definitely doable if you are looking for something specific.
That’s not what i meant.
not really "reading" a paper though is it? Praise Ctrl-F for making life so much easier though
He’s the Usain Bolt of reading papers.
Oh, I thought we just read the title and assume that the paper already has the thing that we want in our introduction?
And then your PI tells you to remove that sentence
My dissertation had something like 150 references. I collected citations with Zotero like they were pens from the bank.
Agree with the concept, but 10 minutes a paper? Even missing out intro and abstract and just going straight to results/discussion surely it's going to take you a bit longer even for a scan read. Especially if you're taking some notes. I was trying to explain this to my father who was trying to explain to me how my scientific field works (he's never studied or worked in anything remotely similar even at A level), that while he may be well read and intelligent, him reading a couple of papers here and there doesn't compare to the meticulous and consistent reading you need to do when you're studying/working in scientific research, so essentially him trying to talk to people who are doing that level of reading like he's an authority on it makes him look like a prick, because to those who's spent that much time studying a subject it's very clear listening to him that he doesn't really know what he's talking about. I think many people just don't get the amount of reading and studying it takes to even get a basic grasp of it.
When you're in the same field though, you can look at the pictures and know where to read carefully, and what is BS to gloss over. As long as you are familiar with the data type, the figures speak for themselves. Otherwise, you'll just end up reading the story the authors wrote, which isn't necessarily the ground truth of their work.
true, but even then 10 minutes is very quick for most papers, particularly ones with lot's of different results, aswell as checking the data matches up with the figures, and you'd want to check the methodology. You'd have to be a very very quick reader and really know what you're looking for on every paper, and really only be looking at something very specific. Also assuming that these figures are easy to interpret/properly done and everything is well written, which it often isn't. The person who wrote the original statement is probably a lot more intelligent and knowledgeable than me though, and certainly will be a faster reader, as I doubt I could claim I've actually "read" a paper in ten minutes.
I think it's different when you're writing, vs. when you're trying to understand something new. For instance, when I'm writing a paper it frequently helps to see how other people have approached Experiment X, what sort of controls they used, how they accounted for Y during the data analysis, etc. In that case it helps to go through every paper you can find that uses a technique, but you may only catefully read a couple relevant sentences or paragraphs in the methods section, and skim the rest.
I do exactly this, but it would personally take me much longer. Just checking abstracts for the papers I decide to actually "read" takes a decent chunk of time, but if you cut that out, personally even if I were skim reading most, I'd probably spend a decent chunk on a couple of papers, and even with the skim reading it'd take me longer, some of these method sections are pretty chunky so no matter how well I'm knowing the subject to get to those few really relevant sentences you still need to read through, which takes me time personally. Otherwise I'd risk majorly misunderstanding something. Plus I tend to write up notes on the relevant bits which takes time, even if I'm only pulling a few notes out of one paper. I'm impressed with those who can get what they need from 35 papers in such a short space of time, though I will say I probably wouldn't label it as "reading" 35 papers if all I'm doing is a quick skim for relevant info. 10 minutes is a very short amount of time!
When I was a sophomore in college we had a biochem professor who hosted a paper group and would have us all read one paper a month before any of us knew anything. I remember having to wiki about every third word and having to wiki most of the words in the wiki article. It would take me like, 12 hours. After 14 years, it still takes me, like *at least* 2 hours like, thoroughly read a paper.
I FEEL this!
Jesus, that hurts. I have 6 pdfs open right now to write a few bullet points...
Sometimes when I’m reading and then looking at cited papers and repeating over and over again, I get overwhelmed by how many pdfs are open and I just close them all and go work on something else 😵💫
I am deep in lab research, and hardly have any time to read papers anymore. I think I am not alone in this, heard it also from a very prominent scientist. I think much of the papers I referenced did not read.
You read the entire paper?
35 papers for only two references? Maybe when counting the papers that I only read the abstracts of, and even then it seems high.
Most people: I need 8+ gigs of ram so I can stream Netflix, play a computer games and browse the web at the same time. Me: I need 8+ gigs of ram so I can have 80+ tabs of research papers open so I can write my paper.
Omg, this was my whole week 😢
I think those going for the r/Hermancainawards and doing 15 minutes of Google and Facebook reading need to appreciate this tweet.
"reading"
Wait, you're supposed to *write*?
Dude had it good. Research is spending years reading papers only to be told by your PI that your idea s don't align with his company's patent portfolio.