Dear collagues,
This is probably a very naive question but to date I haven't obtained a satisfactory answer. I often must study old papers. I recurrently find these old papers very reticent and short in some of the most respected journals of today, e.g. Science and Nature. Some of those are highly cited papers taken as paradigms in specific fields.
I herein include an example from my field, ant venoms. Anyone working on fire ant venom has bumped into the paper below:
http://science.sciencemag.org/content/128/3319/306.2
"Chemical, Insecticidal, and Antibiotic Properties of Fire Ant Venom"
Unfortunately the main author has recently passed away so I cannot ask him this specific detail now: where is the data and methods description?
All results as reported are central to my field of study, but the narrative is too short to allow understanding any details. I though maybe details are presented elsewhere in the edition, but it does not look like from seeing their website.
Perhaps someone more experienced could give me a clue there, please?
Thanks in advance
In many cases, the detailed description of the methods can be found in earlier papers (or sometimes later ones) from the same lab published in journals that allow for more complete descriptions of methods than Science and Nature. Work your way back through the references in the article in question to begin with. Sometimes you have to follow a trail of references back in time until you find the details of a method.
Hi Eduardo, I understand your frustration.
I think the best you can do is to examine papers that reference the original study to see if they were able to replicate it and provide more technical details.
In many cases, the detailed description of the methods can be found in earlier papers (or sometimes later ones) from the same lab published in journals that allow for more complete descriptions of methods than Science and Nature. Work your way back through the references in the article in question to begin with. Sometimes you have to follow a trail of references back in time until you find the details of a method.
Dear all, thanks much for the sound suggestions. Rajendra: I will send an email to Science journal, but I am afraid at the time this was truly their mode of communication (which is unbelievable for todays's yet-not-so-good standards). I have seen the whole published issue online and find no reference to supplementary materials. Steingrimur: In fact subsequent papers (much easier to get) did not reproduce exactly their procedures though they beat this bush in other parts. I'm interested in any detail as this is a poorly studied field and there is much mysterious evidence. I should emphasise I trust these authors based on their excellent output in other papers, thus this is why I am making an effort in learning more from them. Shapiro: Yes, I believe you're right and indeed there seems to exist a Proceedings publication with interesting details they have cited often, but this one is even tougher to get. I am afraid these guys were relying more on direct discussions and conferences to discuss their experimental procedures and data -- I'd have been likewise in the 70s I guess.
Thanks!
If you are referring to Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA, all old papers back to 1915 are available on-line here:
http://www.pnas.org/content/by/year
Your question got me curious. I looked at some of the articles of the first author of the article that you are interested in, and found this one (see citation below) that gave a method for testing the antimicrobial activity of the venom using paper discs. This is much newer, so there is no guarantee that this was done the same way, but another of the authors might know about the 1958 method. My link is through our university library so it would not work for you, but this is an American Society of Microbiology journal and should be readily available.
Antibacterial Activity of Venom Alkaloids from the Imported Fire Ant, Solenopsis invicta Buren1
Jouvenaz, D. P. ; Blum, M. S. ; MacConnell, J. G
Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy, 1972, Vol. 2(4), p.291 [Peer Reviewed Journal]
American Society of Microbiology
Dear Adam, thanks for the indication but actually by proceedings I meant the publications from a certain scientific meeting. I have in fact reached this one via a senior colleague from the US at his local library. Apparently the Science paper is elusive about data and methods used, and also this other proceedings publication. Science communication was different around 60s-70s, more personal, I think.
Dear Anna, thanks for your initiative but the paper you mention I already have, it is a main reference. I managed to obtain a couple of old references on the topic with finer details. I am attaching them here, and shall upload them to Archives.org to hopefully clear out the way to other colleagues. Good papers on a nice topic, but so reticent!..
Thanks!
Dear Eduardo,
This is the fact (bad or good) that several decades ago the standards of methodological descriptions were different from the modern ones. I met with this fact several times in my practice. Try to do what you can do, but if you don't find some details important to you, you should accept it as the reality.
I wish you all the best,
Igor
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