Tag: Science

How science works? – The big picture

Science is an abstract word. I am sure you have an idea of what science is. But can you explain exactly how science works?

The first idea that came to mind is: science is done by scientists. Ok, but what exactly a scientist do? Because if you search on google images the word scientist, you will see an endless list of pictures of people with white lab coats and blue gloves.

But this stereotype only represents a very small branch of science. Experimental biologists and chemists. As you can imagine, not all scientists work with test tubes in a lab.

A scientist is any person who conducts scientific research on a specific topic to understand how nature works and push the boundaries of human knowledge. In fact, the most genuine skill to become a scientist is the use of the scientific method. Not a lab coat. Not a PhD.

Where scientific research takes place

Nowadays, scientific research is mostly carried out in research groups within universities and research institutions, private and public alike. You certainly have heard about universities like Stanford University, the University of Oxford, or the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). And research institutions like NASA in the United States, Max Planck Society in Germany, CNRS in France, or CSIC in Spain. Indeed, most of the countries have national-level institutions that group diverse research centers and laboratories around a branch of knowledge.

In some highly relevant fields, there are even international agencies, such as the World Health Organization (WHO), the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), or UNESCO. But at the very end, the research, the experiments themselves are performed in all those small research groups disseminated in many different centers around the world.

What scientists do

These research groups perform experiments following the scientific method and report publicly their results. They also replicate results from other groups to confirm or challenge their scientific assumptions until the scientific community reaches a consensus.

The scientific community is all those researchers who have contributed to the field by publicly reporting their results. This public reporting process is carried out via peer-reviewed publication.

How science is evaluated

Peer-reviewed publication is the tool we have to evaluate the quality of a research study. Once a scientist or a group of scientists have the results of a study, they write a scientific article explaining: the context and motivation of their study, the detailed method they used to perform the study, the results, and the discussion.

The first version of this report is called manuscript and it is submitted to a journal where reviewers, other scientists in the same field, evaluate if the methods used for the study follow the scientific method and if the conclusions are within the scope of the methods employed.

Reviewers do not judge the results. They only comment objectively on the quality, significance, and originality of the results.

For example, I am a reviewer for several journals in the fields of biomechanics, computational mechanics, and tissue mechanics. I have reviewed studies of scientists from North and South America, Europe, and Asia. As a reviewer, I check that the methods they have employed follow the scientific standards and that there are no flaws in their experiments based on my knowledge on the topic.

What we call science

Once a manuscript is accepted, it becomes a scientific study published in a peer-reviewed journal, also known as paper. These papers are the basic blocks of science. Over time, the best studies/papers are replicated and used as the base for further studies becoming common knowledge (consensus among the scientific community).

This knowledge is the state-of-the-art until someone proved it wrong or have a better theory to explain the same phenomenon. This is a very important point to understand about science. There is no experiment to demonstrate that something is right, you can only prove that something is wrong.

This is how science evolves.

One day, I will write a post about the shortcomings and limitations of the peer-review process. However, for now, this is the best tool we have to evaluate research and the most accepted way to communicate science.

Your turn

What do you think about how science works?

Leave us your opinion in the comments.

The 4 levels of research on a new topic

Scientific studies are highly-narrowed texts which require previous knowledge to understand the key ideas. Therefore, this is not a good starting point if you are new in a research topic. Depending on your knowledge on a specific subject, your starting point will be different.

In this post, I enumerate all the stages you go through before jumping into scientific articles.

Awareness – first contact

Sometimes you are reading technical content and you come up with a technical term. It could be a method, a substance, or a concept that you have never heard before.

In such situations, the first thing I recommend is to search on Wikipedia, to have a first idea of what this word is about.

Can happen that this term does not exist yet in Wikipedia. Then, google it, and this will leads you to posts in specialized blogs or comments in technical forums where you can start to frame this new term in a specific field.

This is the very first step. At this level, you are only looking for a definition and a few ideas associated with this new concept. With the word framed in a context, you gather new keywords related to which you connect with other concepts you already know. Or it opens a new branch in your knowledge tree.

Either way, you start to figure out what this term is about.

Novice – understanding

Now, with a wider perspective, you can look for those keywords in specializes websites, tech blogs, medical forums, YouTube channels, etc.

If the term you are researching is commercialized, it is convenient to look at the webpage of the companies that work on it. Commonly, they have illustrative videos explaining how they materialize this concept to their specific products or services, in a very friendly and intuitive way.

After consulting several pages, you have a clear idea of what this new term is and how it works from a general point of view. You start to familiarize yourself with the scientific jargon related and you can express the concept in your own words.

To go a step further, you should check the references cited on those pages. Frequently, discussions about technical concepts reference to more technical content via links embedded in the text or via footnotes at the bottom of the page.

As you dig deeper into the topic you will see references to more specific sources. And, ultimately they will lead you to books or scientific studies. At this level, you are not a novice anymore. You start to understand the topic and shift from just learning to questioning.

Advanced – getting serious

When you chose a topic to master, I recommend beginning with book chapters or review articles before to jump into scientific studies.

Books and review articles are not primary sources. In other words, they are a collection of studies organized around a topic written from a broader perspective. They are less specific than a scientific study and have longer introductions with many references.

Besides, review texts already separate the chaff from the wheat. They highlight the key studies in the field. The ones which have moved the research forward. They give you a good overview of the state of the art of the topic up to the publication date.

Those are the studies you have to collect first on your scientific library.

Mater – getting into the details

Original research articles are the fundamental block of science communication. They are the primary sources, where the methodology, the results, and the limitations of a study are detailed.

By carefully reading the key studies of the field you will have already come in contact with most of the ideas on the subject.

Now, you are ready to read any subject-related scientific study and understand where to put the piece in your mental puzzle. You can file them, and tag them, with a solid background.

In practice

This is an overview of the different levels you go through during research.

You don’t necessarily go through all of them that depend on your previous knowledge on the subject and your desire to go deeper, but to be efficient I recommend moving from one level to the next one without jumping a level. Because if you move too fast, you will find yourself with big holes in your understanding of the subject and it will slow down your research process.

Question for you

What is the process you follow when you start researching a new topic? Have you ever come across a scientific study and not understood anything?

Leave us your response in the comments.

Science News: media vs real world

If you are like most of the people probably you have read the science section of a newspaper or a magazine, but rarely you have read a scientific study.

This is normal. The science and technology section in the media is amusing. It makes us feel smarter. However, scientific studies are not so reader-friendly and certainly do not make you feel smarter.

Media science

Science News in the media may make scientific discussions enjoyable and interesting as general knowledge, but they are not useful for professional use.

The problem is that more often than not, the engaging magazine/TV version transforms the factual scientific jargon in an optimistic juicy interpretation, leading easily the reader to a misinterpretation of the actual results of the study.

Of course, everybody wants to hear that we have found a cure for cancer, but scientific advances are usually more modest. Many small studies in the same direction are necessary to get a breakthrough discovery.

A good example of how the scientific studies are communicated in mainstream media is explained in this show of John Oliver. This hilarious and at the same time sadly true episode explains the distance between the headlines and the actual scientific results.

Real science

Scientific studies are dense to read. Full of technical details. They are not stand-alone sources. You need previous knowledge in the field to understand the issue.

But scientific literature has a specific structure too. The communication follows basic rules which are easy to learn. And once you understand them, you can process the information better.

In this blog, I aim to explain to you how to deal efficiently with the scientific literature to make it a useful source of information for your projects.

Middle ground

There is a middle ground between juicy media and tough scientific articles, specialized magazines that divulge scientific advances in a precise and pleasant way. Some general examples are:

You should find sources that focus on your field of interest.

Beyond the source

In any case, more important than the source, it is to read science critically. This is a skill that takes time to develop, but some tips help us to be more critical. I recommend you to watch this video from It’s Okey To Be Smart who gives some tricks on how to read science news.

Be skeptical when the article

  • has a question in the headline.
  • is based on a press release.
  • use words like: a study suggests, scientists baffle…
  • do not follow the scientific method.
  • have financial incentives for you to read.
  • use hype vocabulary.
  • is just quoting with no review work behind.
  • use stereotypes or social constructions.

Now it’s your turn

What is your preferred source to read science news?

Let us your answer in comments

Why read science like a scientist

Did you ever wonder where all those “a study says…” come from?

We heard often in the news, on the radio, or on social media, articles saying — “a new study found…” or “scientists have discovered…”

Those words are magic. We automatically trust whatever comes after because the best tool that humans have to understand nature is through science.

Science is amazing. Science is fun, but at the same time, it is extremely complex.

That is why it is important to understand how science works. To have a critical view that allows us to distinguish between information and noise.

I am going to confess to you one thing — I have been working as a scientist for more than 8 years, and scientific work is wearisome.

Do not misinterpret my words. I love to work in science, but scientific work is a trial-error process, exhausting, and often not successful.

Why, then,

Why I propose you to read science like a scientist?

Like everything in life, there is a right time for each thing.

When you are new to a subject and you only want to know what is it about, the worst thing you can do is to read a “paper” (that is how actually scientists call scientific studies), because you will not understand anything. There are better ways to start to navigate a new topic.

However, when you want to deep dive into a specific subject, the basic texts are not enough. Sometimes, for example, after reading several blog posts, Wikipedia articles, or maybe even a youtube video, you reach that point where you realize you know more about the subject than what you find in those texts.

It depends on how seriously you take the topic.

What if…

  • you are trying to create something new, with the latest technologies?
  • you want to become a reference author in your niche?
  • you have to write an essay (a piece of work) and show novelty?
  • you are interested in a narrow topic that is not mainstream, and it is very difficult to find information about?

In this blog, I want to explain to you what are the best sources for all the levels of involvement in a scientific/technical topic. From where to start in a new topic to when it is advisable to go a step further and create your own scientific library.

You will be surprised, how often build your own scientific library could be useful.

Tell us

What topic would you like to read on a scientific level?

Let us your response in the comments and I will recommend you where to start.