In the past few months, I have probably spent more time reading “old” papers from the past century than papers from the present one (I say “old” because my definition of the word always seems to ruffle some feathers). Initially, it was just something I did to get some historical context to research happening in the present. But what started out as a chore quickly turned into one of my favourite pastimes. I had expected to have to trudge through difficult old English and unfamiliar techniques. Instead, I found elegant experiments presented in a humble and accessible way. Despite studying science for several years, I had no idea that old papers had such a different character - in my courses we generally only read papers a few years old. That is not criticism; it merely illustrates how novelty-driven science education is nowadays – as it has to be. Science is expanding rapidly, both in terms of the techniques we use and the number of new studies being published. The scientists of tomorrow need to have this knowledge to be competitive in the modern world.

The point I’m trying to make here is not that we should stop reading new science. I just want to discuss why I think young scientists in particular might benefit from reading a few old papers to complement all the new science they encounter.

New papers for knowledge…

Science stands on the proverbial shoulders of giants. Directly or indirectly, new papers will therefore build on science from the past. By reading the newest literature, we get the most updated view on a problem with all the benefits of hindsight. Not only have numerous other minds thought about the problem since and added their evidence and insights, but it might also be easier to understand older findings when we can interpret them in the context of new developments in related fields. With limited time on our hands, it makes sense to focus on reading the newest research because it covers what we currently know.

…old papers for learning

My argument in favour of old papers comes down to why we want students to read papers – do we want them to gain information or learn about science? If the aim is to acquire facts and know how current methods can be used, then new papers are undeniably better. But if we want students to learn what science is about at a more fundamental level – show them how science works – then I would argue that old papers have educational value as well.

New papers show the clean story…

Reading papers can feel daunting. I think this is true for everyone but especially for students like me who are starting out in science. Take a recent Nature paper and you are faced with results from next-generation sequencing, fancy imaging techniques, transgenic mice and electrophysiology, all within one paper. You get densely packed tables and figures with so many panels that you run out of letters in the alphabet to name them with. As if that wasn’t enough, the writing is full of abbreviations, complicated words and run-on sentences. It’s like the articles are deliberately written in a difficult way to convince us that the authors are smart people doing advanced and clever science. Any limitations of the study, if ever mentioned, are dumped into a short paragraph at the end and any oddities or mistakes will never see the light of day. The purpose of a paper is to show a clean story and establish the authors as authoritative voices in the field. Obviously not all papers are this extreme and there are also many good things about papers written in the modern age, especially in terms of open data. But when you are a newbie, it’s all too easy to feel discouraged.

…old papers show the messy journey

Compared to that, picking up a paper from a few decades ago can feel like a relief. The papers are often short and written in a simpler manner – I don’t have to spend half my energy trying to decipher sentences or look things up. Not only that, they also give a better insight into what doing science is like. Odd observations are included, mistakes are acknowledged, anecdotes are shared. Limitations and alternative explanations are often explored at length, models are proposed and ideas for more experiments are outlined. As young scientists, we often have no knowledge or experience of this very nonlinear nature of the research process. When we only see the polished findings in new papers, listen to lecturers present their successful experiments, and perform highly guided and controlled practicals, it is hard to understand how convoluted and downright messy science can be. Encouraging students to read older papers could be one way of introducing them to the research process without the overwhelming amount of jargon and data that make current papers difficult to follow. If you go to the very earliest papers, you can even read what scientists thought about during an experiment, almost like you were there with them. As many of us can’t be in a lab right now, perhaps the next best option is to just live vicariously through our favourite 19th century scientists.

Apart from their educational potential, old papers can be a valuable source of ideas. Not only because the papers contain interesting overlooked observations but because the way in which the authors consider their findings teach us new ways to think about ideas in the present day. There is also something elegant about a “simple” experiment that perfectly addresses a question. I feel that we nowadays sometimes use a fancy technique for the sake of it, not because it is the best way to answer a question. I might not have gained as many useful facts from reading old papers, but I feel that I have learned new and better ways to think about problems.

If you still feel that there is no use in reading old papers, I will leave you with this comment from Jeremy Fox:

“Today’s current literature is tomorrow’s older literature. So if you don’t think people today should bother reading older stuff, presumably you don’t think people tomorrow should bother reading your stuff.”