Many of you receiving this email would be reading research papers for one reason or another.
Remember we talked a lot about your “Why” for reading research.
It can be because you need to get a presentation prepared for your team’s journal club next month.
It can be because you are looking up the latest evidence to back up a treatment decision for the patient sitting in your clinic.
It can be because you are drafting a systematic review about a rare disease that you are just curious about.
I think that’s awesome.
You’re obviously doing this because some part of you knows it can provide you with the information that you want.
And it should be giving you what you want.
Let’s get that straight.
It should be giving you the information that you want but for whatever reason it’s not informative to the level you want it to be and if we’re being honest —
You want more.
More specific information.
More detailed information.
More comprehensive information.
You can search all you want within the existing body of knowledge, but sometimes you just have a feeling that you’ve hit the metaphorical cliff edge of science whenever you ask enough questions in a particular direction.
At this point, you’d always wonder whether you’re satisfied with merely being a research reader standing at the cliff edge — just wondering.
What if you were on the other side of the text?
What if you were the one asking the question, doing the experiments, and writing the paper?
What if you were hauling the stones for the foundation of the bridge extending beyond the cliff towards where you want to be?
And then you tell yourself to stop daydreaming about where you want to be and get back to where you are.
I know this because I’ve been in that situation time and time again.
Thinking about reading research and the remote possibility of doing research from the place I’m at.
Having to triple check the Parks–Bielschowsky three-step test for an isolated trochlear nerve palsy and asking my supervisor to check it one last time to ease my self-doubt of picking up the correct physical sign.
Too embarassed to tell my supervisor that I do not a clue about what I am looking at other than squiggly lines on electroencephalograms and electromyographies.
Tyring to hide my sweaty palms in my pocket each time I offer thrombolysis even to a clearly hemiplegic stroke patient despite having gone through the contraindications checklist. The 4th time.
That’s where I’m at as a junior resident in neurology working at a tertiary non-university hospital in Hong Kong.
I don’t know anything about neurology.
I don’t know anything about statistics.
I don’t know anything about being a professor.
It beats me why I am even thinking about reading research in the first place, let alone doing research.
I bet it beats you too.
And so in the next email, we’ll talk about why you are more than qualified to do research.