2024年4月16日发(作者：)

Dr. Plopper’s Guide to Critical Reading of Primary Literature

Overall tips: 总技巧

1. Just because a scientific study has been published, this does not mean it is

perfect. And the imperfections are not so minute that a non-expert cannot find

them. Any student of science can, and indeed should, read science critically.

This means you can read a paper by a Nobel laureate and find fault with it. It is

in fact expected that, as a practicing scientist, you can criticize any science.

The level of your critical analysis will differ with your experience level, but you

should be able to criticize science even as a relatively inexperienced

undergraduate.

1、科学研究不能仅因为已发表，就认为它是完美的。它们的不足也不是微小到

只有专业人员才能发现。任何从事科研的学生都能，而且确实应该能够，批判性

地阅读科学文献。这意味着你读一篇诺贝尔奖获得者的文章都能在其中发现不

足。它实际上期望作为科学工作者的你能对任何学科进行分析评论。你分析评论

的水平会因你的经验水平而有差异，但你应该至少能够象一名相对无经验的本科

生来分析科学文献。

2. Manuscripts are not read the same way newspapers or novels are read.

One does not simply read every word, from the front to the back, in a single

pass. The reason for this is fairly obvious: manuscripts contain a high density

of information, and not all of this information is of equal value to the reader. In

fact, quite a lot of effort is made by the authors and editors to break the

information into discrete units that can be read almost independently.

Inexperienced readers of primary literature should pay close attention to how

manuscripts are organized, and seek specific types of information from each

section. You should read the manuscript many times, but each time read only a

portion of it, and do so because you are looking for specific information.

2、科学原稿的阅读方式不能象读报纸和小说那样，不能简单地从送头到尾地阅

读每个单词， 而且只看一遍就行了。这个原因很明显：科学稿包含了高密度的

信息，对读者来说，这些信息并不是等价的。实际上，作者和编辑花了很大气力

来将信息分成独立的单元，这些单元几乎可以独立阅读。无经验的读者在阅读原

始文献时应仔细留意文稿如何组织，寻找每个部分的特别信息。你应该反复阅读

文稿，但每次仅读其中的一部分，这样作的是因为你在寻找特别的信息。

3. Have a good textbook handy to look up background information and

definitions.

3、手边备本好的教科书来查找背景知识和定义。

4. Reading a manuscript takes a lot of time, especially if you are unused to it.

To do all of the procedures outlined here will take you at least three hours.

4、读一篇科学稿要花好多时间，特别是如果你从未接触过的知识。将以下纲领

性的步骤作全就要花费至少三个小时。

Step-by-step method: 逐步顺序阅读

1. Read the Title. 读题

1a. Understand each word. The title provides the most important information in

the manuscript. What, really, does this mean? This means the authors have

combed through their data and have decided that if you remember nothing

else about the paper, this is the one thing you should remember. You may be

surprised to learn that most authors spend quite a lot of effort on the title,

because they are forced to distil many months (or even years) of work into a

single sentence. Imagine crunching an entire year of college courses into a

single sentence! As a result, they shuffle and reshuffle their data until the most

important point comes out. They also shuffle and reshuffle the words in the

title.

1a.理解每个单词题目提供了原稿的最重要的信息。它真正的含义是什么？这意

味着作者综合他们的资料，并决定如果这篇文章其它别的东西你记不住的话，这

个是你应该记住的。你可能会对大部分作者在题目上花了很多气力感到吃惊，因

为他们不得不将数月（甚至数年）的工作浓缩到一句话内。想象一下，将整整一

年的课程咀嚼揉合成一句话多么困难！因此， 他们将数据改组再改组，直到能

够表现最重要的观点。同样，题目中的文字他们也是反复斟酌。

The result is that each word in a title usually carries a lot of weight. Because a

lot of effort is put into creating a title, it should be rich in information content. To

the reader, this means you should be able to get a lot of ideas out of the title. I

usually spend at least five (real) minutes thinking about the title before I read

anything else; most beginning students spend about five seconds on a title,

figuring, “If it’s important, I’ll learn about it later in the paper.” Bad idea!

结果当然是题目中的每个单词都常极有分量。因为花如此大的气力来确定题目，

它理所当然地饱含着信息。对于读者来说，这意味着你应从题目中得出许多的想

法。我通常花至少5分钟（真的）来在阅读其它内容前思考题目；大部分初学者

用大约5秒钟的时间来读题目，估摸一下，“如果它很重要，我会在下面的文章中

学习它。”馊主意！

1b. Create a list of experiments you expect to see in the paper. In practical

terms, this means you should consider the implications of each word in a title.

You should be able to derive a list of what sort of experiments you think the

authors performed, what the data might have looked like, and how the authors

reached their conclusions, before you even read the paper. Write this list down.

It may be completely wrong, that’s OK. But try to think ahead about what will

be coming. If eventually you discover that your list looks nothing like what the

authors did, that is very instructional: did you miss a critical point, or (this

happens) did they? Did they mislead you with their title? Many papers have

titles that border on being advertisements: they paint the data in the most

positive light, but may not be entirely accurate. Your job is to see through that!

1b、将你期望在文献中能看到的实验列表。从实践角度来说，这意味着你应该

考虑过题目中每个单词的含义。甚至在你读论文前，你就应该能够由题目列出你

觉得作者会作的实验清单， 数据会是什么样子，作者怎样得出他们的结论。把

这些清单记下来。它可能完全错误的，那没关系。但你在阅读全文之前就努力提