Summer Neuroscience Program
AT THE ROCKEFELLER UNIVERSITY
Papers are the bread and butter of research science.
They are the main way scientists communicate their work, but they're tough to read, even for those of us with experience! Unfortunately, this often means that the newest scientific developments aren't super accessible. We've found that a journal club is a useful way to learn and practice strategies for tackling papers and to become more comfortable finding and interpreting cutting edge research. Journal clubs are small groups that meet regularly to discuss a specific paper or set of papers, much like a book club. They allow students to take a deep dive into a problem, summarize their thoughts for others in a small group setting, bounce ideas off of one another, and ask questions of their peers to better understand and critique new research. An entire week of the program is dedicated to daily meetings with a graduate student mentor who guides two students through reading a recent paper related to neuroscience and presenting what they learn to the rest of the group.
Reading a science paper
The goal of reading a science paper is not to start with the first word and end with the last; it's to get as much information about the thinking, approach, and results that comprise a new piece of research. As with any learned skill, with practice you'll develop strategies for attacking a science paper that work for you. Working 2 on 1 with a mentor, students learn how to get the most out of data figures, how to put results in their own words, how to evaluate whether the authors have put forward a good case for the arguments they make in a paper, and how to come up with new questions that could expand upon the published study. We've found that collaborating with a partner to tackle a paper can be much more rewarding than trying to do it alone. In fact, mentors noticed that students felt more comfortable interacting online in the smaller group setting, often turning their cameras on to talk face to face with a partner and occasionally staying over at the end of the day to keep discussing their paper.