Hello folks,
Here is the summary of responses (apologies for any awkward
formatting below) to my request for published articles on how to
critically read scientific literature. There appeared to be few
(none?) articles in a classic sense as most of the suggestions are
books or supplements to textbooks. Thanks to all who responded, and
please post if new information comes to light.
· Teaching Issues and Experiments in Ecology (TIEE;
tiee.ecoed.net) has a Teaching section which includes many resources
for ecology faculty. There is an essay titled Helping Your Students
Interpret Figures and Tables: "Step One-Step Two" (http://
tiee.ecoed.net/teach/essays/figs_tables.html).
Another useful resource is the SERC site for geology faculty. For
instance, here is a URL about a peer review form for writing
research papers - http://serc.carleton.edu/introgeo/peerreview/
respaper.html. You could modify this for reading research papers.
· Critical Reading and Writing for Postgraduates
Mike Wallace University of Bath, UK
Alison Wray Cardiff University
© April 2006 240 pages
Sage Publications Ltd
"The Miniature Guide to Critical Thinking: Concepts and Tools" by
Richard Paul and Linda Elder
· Reading Primary Literature: A Practical Guide to Evaluating
Research Articles in Biology, By Christopher Gillen
· A supplement to go with Campbell & Reece "Biology" called
"Inquiry in Action: Interpreting Scientific Papers" by Buskirk &
Gillen. ISBN: 0-321-53659-2. Part A includes 9 articles that are
referenced in the textbook with questions that go along with each,
and Part B is a guide to evaluating articles, going through the
intro, methods, results, and discussion with a series of questions.
With thanks to: Matthew Sarver, Tamera Minnick, Siobhan Fennessy, and
Kelly Sjerven.
Likewise, I received numerous excellent articles on the peer-review
process if anyone is interested.
Cheers,
Andrew
