1. SEARCHING THE LITERATURE

2. NECESSITY FOR A SEARCH  Six hours in the library or on the computer may save six months in the laboratory  Science grows by the addition of new material on top of earlier work  You must know what works have been done before in order to make a worth-while contribution  You MUST find out what is already published in the field before starting a new research project  You can’t know everything that there is to know on any subject, instead you should:  Find out if the information which is the object of the proposed research is already available  Acquire a broad general background on the given field

3. THE STRUCTURE OF THE SCIENTIFIC LITERATURE  Pubmed.com  Review Journals  Abstract and Indexing Journals  Basic literature search of the internet  Textbooks

4. SUGGESTIONS FOR SEARCHING  It is best to read the most general information first  May even look at the information on wikpedia or the internet in general  Textbooks may be helpful for general background materials or to let you know how much is already known on a particular subject  Consultation of abstracts and journals should be done next  Work backward in time until the desired coverage has been obtained or until a year is reached which has been adequately dealt with in a book  Next read current original articles  You may not find these on pubmed, you may have to search individual journals  Use references to earlier work in a paper  Talk to someone who knows about the work

5. NOTES AND INDEXES  A large problem for a researcher is to save information which has been gathered from the reading  End Note, index cards via the computer  Index Cards  Recording authors, references, and any notes, which are filed according to some system  A suitable system  Alphabetically according to the senior author  The author whose name comes first  Alphabetically under the university or company where the work was done  Indexing by subject matter  Make sure categories are broad enough they don’t overlap  May also have an index sheet that has author’s names

6. ELEMENTARY SCIENTIFIC METHOD  Authority in science  The scientist rejects authority as the ultimate basis of truth  The scientists reserves the right to decide whether other workers are  Reputable  Good science  Credible  The scientist reserves the right to repeat and test the work of others whether or not the other feels this is desirable  The fact there are very large areas of agreement, in spite of the individualistic, antiauthoritarian nature of science, is partial evidence for the validity of scientific methods

7. OBSERVATIONS AND DESCRIPTIONS  An important component of observation is the immediate recording of the data in a notebook  It is important to have some hypothesis in mind before making an observation  How would you know what to observe otherwise  Be aware of observer bias  Double blind studies

8. CAUSE AND EFFECT 