Wednesday, March 5, 2008

On selecting paper for journal club

Three words: Nature or Science.

Another three words: Papers with Previews.

Corollary:

If you want to torture your audience, pick Cell, etc.

If you want to put your colleagues to sleep, pick papers with western blots only.

If you want to put your colleagues to sleep for eternity, pick papers with electrophysiology only.

On the importance of a paper

The importance of a scientific paper can be best quantified by the number of the dublicated copies of that particular paper on your desk.

corollary:

The importance of a scientific paper can be further quantified by the number of times that you have re-read it, often without knowing that you have read it ten thousand times before until you saw another highlighted copy of the same paper lying somewhere on your desk.