Reflections on Reading the Literature: A Challenge in Straddling the “Soft” and “Hard” Sciences
Last Monday (February 22, 2021) was the first day of school, for the first semester of the academic year – marking the beginning of the second half of this “two year expensive sabbatical from clinical medicine”. Yes, this one.
Structurally, a lot of the subjects I am enrolled in are centered on reading journal articles or book chapters prior to the class meeting. Thankfully none of them this year have a “required textbook” so I don’t really have to buy any new books – most of the readings are handpicked and supplied by the lecturer as PDFs.
Coming from a science background and quite familiar with reading the medical literature, I struggle with the prescribed journal articles and texts from the social sciences. It’s like reading a whole new language. All these new isms (neoliberalism seems to be a popular one, as is constructivism) and strange common words with uncommon appendages that spell check doesn’t recognize (looking at you, governmentality).
The layout is different. Most social science journal articles (in PDF form) are single-column, with wide margins. I guess they’re set up like that so you can write copious notes… critical reflection is apparently important, so the publishers give you space for it. The medical articles are two-column and have narrow margins. Perhaps those publishers don’t give you space for notes, because this is hard science, it has been peer-reviewed, and you just have to accept the facts; if you want to refute, write your own paper.
Which means a lot of the social science articles are 25 pages long with 5 pages of references (therefore I always look at how many “true” pages I have to read instead of the total number), and medical articles around 5-7 with 2-3 pages of references.
References are another thing. I find the Chicago or Harvard-style referencing in which the name and date are quoted (for example: Smith and Wesson, 1856) quite distracting, especially if you have multiple references (for example: Smith and Wesson, 1856; Warhol, 1980; Lennon et al., 1960). Having numbered references (superscripted 1, 2, 3) just appears more neat, more concise, more streamlined.
Perhaps I am just being too nitpicky. Straddling hard science and soft science has its challenges, and this is probably one of the minor ones! Wait till I actually have to apply what I learn…
