A Guide to Reading Science

To find novel cutting-edge tips, techniques, and interventions to improve performance, we often look at scientific research. However, many individuals (and media sources) aren’t great at interpreting the research, which leads to inaccurate ideas on how to best improve performance. As an athlete or coach, being able to read and interpret research publications is important when deciding if that novel training technique is worthwhile to incorporate into your own plans.  In this blog post, I’ll provide some tips to help you improve your ability to read and understand the research.

One of the first things to look for is where the research was published. While there are a number of journals where scientists can publish their research, each varies in status.  The status of a journal is indicated by it’s “impact factor”, which can be found on the journal’s website. If a journal has a high impact factor, it more likely publishes impactful research that is of higher quality.  Of note, a great study can still be published in a journal with a lower impact factor. However, it’s still worthwhile to see where a study was published as there is an increasing number of “predatory” journals publishing non-sense.

The next step is to actually read the article. Many folks develop a bad habit of reading only the Abstract and then the Conclusion at the end of the article.  The other sections, though, are where you’ll be able to decide if the research can be applied to you.  For example, read the Methods section.  Within the Methods, you’ll see who the study participants were. Were they sedentary? A sedentary individual will benefit from almost any performance enhancing intervention, so you shouldn’t necessarily expect the same results.  Were they world-class athletes?  An elite athlete has less room for improvement so it’s possible they may not have improved in the study, although benefits could still be seen in other populations.

The Methods section also describes how performance was measured.  Was it a 100k time trial?  The ability to maintain a certain power until failure (“time to exhaustion test”)? The peak power during a couple of sprints?  The difficulty with conducting sports performance research is determining a test that is applicable to the real-world.  No test will be perfect but it should be at least somewhat applicable. Another complicating layer is the motivation of participants. A test that requires maximal effort requires motivation. Sometimes researchers will include a reward system to those who display maximal effort although this still doesn’t fully replicate a true competitive atmosphere.

After the Methods, you’ve got to read the Results.  The Results section is filled with numbers and isn’t always the easiest to read, but it’s necessary.  Do the numbers match the conclusions of the study?  It is possible for researchers to find a minimal improvement that is “significant.” For example, an improvement of 2 seconds in a 40k time trial may be significant for some, but that’s a small improvement for most athletes.  If the intervention required a large investment in time or money, it would be wiser to focus your energy on other areas where greater improvements could occur. 

With an understanding of the results, you can move on to the Discussion section.  One of the more important parts of this section is the discussion of the study limitations, found towards the end of the paper.  Here the researchers highlight the “problems” with their study.  They may indicate that the study participants were not representative of actual athletes.  They may indicate the drink mix they were studying caused stomach issues in 95% of the participants.  These are important things to know, but you should also not rely on them to identify all of the limitations.  By reading the Methods and Results, you may also discover limitations that were not raised.

The tips above will help you to better critique the scientific research. I will admit, though, that sometimes the hardest part is understanding the writing as the scientific writing style is not always the easiest to read. However, just like Shakespeare, the more of it you read, the more of it you’ll understand.  So, download some research papers, cozy up to that fireplace, and get to reading!  Thanks for reading!