SEARCHING THE LITERATURE

NECESSITY FOR A SEARCH  Six hours in the library or on the computer may save six months in the laboratory  Science grows by the addition of new material on top of earlier work  You must know what works have been done before in order to make a worth-while contribution  You MUST find out what is already published in the field before starting a new research project  You can’t know everything that there is to know on any subject, instead you should:  Find out if the information which is the object of the proposed research is already available  Acquire a broad general background on the given field

THE STRUCTURE OF THE SCIENTIFIC LITERATURE  Pubmed.com  Review Journals  Abstract and Indexing Journals  Basic literature search of the internet  Textbooks

SUGGESTIONS FOR SEARCHING  It is best to read the most general information first  May even look at the information on wikpedia or the internet in general  Textbooks may be helpful for general background materials or to let you know how much is already known on a particular subject  Consultation of abstracts and journals should be done next  Work backward in time until the desired coverage has been obtained or until a year is reached which has been adequately dealt with in a book  Next read current original articles  You may not find these on pubmed, you may have to search individual journals  Use references to earlier work in a paper  Talk to someone who knows about the work

NOTES AND INDEXES  A large problem for a researcher is to save information which has been gathered from the reading  End Note, index cards via the computer  Index Cards  Recording authors, references, and any notes, which are filed according to some system  A suitable system  Alphabetically according to the senior author  The author whose name comes first  Alphabetically under the university or company where the work was done  Indexing by subject matter  Make sure categories are broad enough they don’t overlap  May also have an index sheet that has author’s names

ELEMENTARY SCIENTIFIC METHOD  Authority in science  The scientist rejects authority as the ultimate basis of truth  The scientists reserves the right to decide whether other workers are  Reputable  Good science  Credible  The scientist reserves the right to repeat and test the work of others whether or not the other feels this is desirable  The fact there are very large areas of agreement, in spite of the individualistic, antiauthoritarian nature of science, is partial evidence for the validity of scientific methods

OBSERVATIONS AND DESCRIPTIONS  An important component of observation is the immediate recording of the data in a notebook  It is important to have some hypothesis in mind before making an observation  How would you know what to observe otherwise  Be aware of observer bias  Double blind studies

CAUSE AND EFFECT 