I am a graduate student, and I often feel strangely anxious when reading papers. I was wondering whether the same is true for other people.
There are basically two scenarios where I feel that way:
a) I start reading up on a topic and I find that people make outrageous claims, are methodologically unclear, seem to be warping data to make it fit to their premises or their conclusions, or (which mainly happened when I had to read philosophy for my BA) make highly disputible claims backed up by verbal shows of authority more than good arguments; or even if they have good arguments, they start by making their claims which makes me very anxious about having been wrong about something all my life. To sum it up, I get physically anxious by reading papers which defend ideas contradicting my own. What makes me clam up is a mixture of the discomfort of having something you think is wrong be boldly proclaimed in writing, possibly without ever having been contradicted, and the discomfort of engaging the possibility of being provably wrong.
b) Once I've done a lot of reading and I believe that I have spotted an error that has been made in the past and that is being passed on from paper to paper, I usually try to tackle that error and prove it to be wrong. Now when I read new papers, there's a feeling of dread because either they might again argue for the position I believe is wrong, but might be so convincing that they prove me wrong, in which case all work I've done on my idea so far is wasted, or because they might have spotted the error too and laid it bare, in which case all work I've done so far is wasted too.
My question is: Is this feeling of dread, anxiety, or clamming up inside usual when reading papers on contentious points, and if so, are there any good techniques for avoiding it?
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