Arguably, the primary value of scientific papers isn’t in reading them, but writing them. You learn so much in the process.
Writing a paper sharpens your mental focus like nothing else. Like Japanese bonsai art or building a ship in a bottle, paper writing forces you to obsess over every meticulous detail — word choice, overall tone, readability of graphs — and of course more mundane details like font size and line spacing. This microscopic attention to every aspect of your work brings out a wonderful, if somewhat exhausting, intellectual rapture. I have never thought so clearly about a piece of research than when I’m in the throes of putting together a paper against a deadline.
Matt Welsh, while defending the scientific paper. Take a look!
