How you should read a scientific paper

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Do you read the abstract first? If so, you're doing it wrong, Jennifer Raff says in a guide for non-scientists. Raff starts with the introduction, then methods, results, and conclusions: "When I’ve got a collection of papers assembled for deep reading, I always read the abstract last. I do this because abstracts contain a succinct summary of the entire paper, and I’m concerned about inadvertently becoming biased by the authors’ interpretation of the results."

September 5, 2013

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