Hacker News new | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submit login

I'm in a similar situation but a decade removed. I'm not sure I even remember what I learned previously - how have you retained anything after 2 decades?



I try to read journal papers every now and then, usually when investigating the source of some news story, or when digging down into the molecular details of a personal health interest. Somewhat contrary to the theme of TFA, I've found that my 20 year old training has provided good mileage in terms of understanding current research. Much of the overarching theory of molecular biology hasn't changed in that time, and a lot of the same techniques are still used, if often miniaturized and scaled, e.g. microarray methods for things I learned to do using blots. For when I find a gap in my knowledge, modern literature search tech facilitates digging down to find related papers that describe newer theories or ones that describe new methods. Often I'll find references to review papers which are essentially designed to get one up to speed on a topic. If anything papers are easier to access now than back when I was in university, wink wink.

Oh, and there are definitely quite a few bored biochemists contributing serious detail to select wikipedia articles. With grain of salt in hand, I've found some pretty high quality descriptions (in terms of detail and ease of understanding) of molecular pathways peppered throughout articles on various topics, which can serve as decent starting points for diving into the literature on those topics.

I'm a far cry from considering myself current on the latest research, but I feel not too far behind and that I can catch up quickly when needed.




Join us for AI Startup School this June 16-17 in San Francisco!

Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: