[josephkhan]

Hey guys, I just joined a research lab doing work on Alzheimer’s as a full time staff research associate after a 6 month stint at a large biopharmaceutical company in QC. I was wondering if there were any tips on dissecting research papers better because I was assigned to read some papers in order to get a grasp of the topics we are researching and it seems very overwhelming with information and methods that I’m not too familiar with. Am I required to fully understand every aspect of these papers in order to be successful in this lab? Thanks in advanced!

[Babcock_Hall]

As a general rule, I don't expect myself to get much out of a paper on the first reading; I assume that after several readings, things will begin to come together.  Some people are better writers than others, and some subjects are more difficult than others; therefore, the number of readings might vary.  One thing that might help is to start with review articles.