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Expert: Daniel Mazur - 5/19/2009


Question
What is the purpose of compiling and presenting information in a scientific paper?

Answer
Hi,
the purpose is simply to let other scientists and public know, what we have found, discovered. Scientific article published in a refereed journal, moreover, passes through a refereeing process, which serves as a safeguard for the journal not to publish bad articles - "bad" is not taken by what facts are presented, but how well founded are all the statements of discoveries that the authors claim. It is not 100% efficient, but fairly good.
In contrast to that there are scientific articles available freely on the Internet. As they have not been screened by the refereeing process, one must treat information in them very carefully. But it is important that they exist, because it saves time for the good papers to get to the readers and it also gives the unpublishable works access to the readers, who can do the screening by themselves.
Cheers,
Daniel

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Questions anyone (teenager, undergrad, graduate, professional) may ask on physics, mathematics or inorganic chemistry. Questions may concern subjects themselves or a possible future career in them, if you need advice on a school or hobby project, or you just came across a question that is beyond your current curriculum. I answer bare textbook problems sometimes, but I reserve the the right to redirect you to Physics-Physics section. The kind of questions I like to answer: I just started having science classes at school and they seem difficult, but I enjoy them. Where do I find more information on this, which is not in textbooks but still comprehensible to me? Just leaving high school, and I feel science is really the thing for me. Can you recommend a school and an undergrad program suitable to my inclinations? I am in my second undergraduate year in Physics. We learned the basics of universe expanding this year, the Hubble constant and all that, but invited speakers that gave talks on astrophysics in our department seemed not to agree with this model at all. Is it of any use at all? I am building a [materials research] experimental device for my masters/doctorate thesis and I have the following problem:... I have tried ..., but it still doesn't work. Where might the problem be?

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