I was thinking about whether it would be possible to create a 3/4 year bachelors programme which goal is to teach the student to be able to read any/most scientific article? If so, do you think this programme would be valuable? What would you think the prime courses should be? I myself would believe high level mathematics would definetly be a must.
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7If you include mathematics - the average mathematics journal article can be read by maybe 100 people. There are on the order of 1000 people in the world who understand all the details of Wiles's proof of Fermat's last theorem.– Alexander WooCommented Oct 28, 2020 at 22:26
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Probably not in the US, but where are you asking about?– BuffyCommented Oct 28, 2020 at 22:29
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Maybe I should have rephrased my question to being able to read scientific papers that allow one to understand all scientific articles for which only undergraduate/graduate knowledge is needed for.– KrokoCommented Oct 28, 2020 at 23:24
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@Alexander Woo: There are on the order of 1000 people in the world who understand all the details of Wiles's proof --- This seems too high by perhaps factor of 10 to me. Maybe you mean "who have the background and ability to understand all the details of Wiles's proof"?– Dave L RenfroCommented Oct 29, 2020 at 7:58
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What would be the goal of a programme like this? 'Reading' an article itself is not really a valuable skill. Understanding the content and being able to contextualize it within the bigger scope of the field would be. Is that the goal?– JeroenCommented Oct 29, 2020 at 10:23
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2 Answers
It would not be a real bachelors program. A bachelors program should not be focused on a single skill (reading) and it should not be focused on solely on consumption skills to the neglect of creation skills.
answered Oct 28, 2020 at 23:01
There are several impediments here. In the US such a program would be outside the very philosophy of a bachelor's program. Elsewhere the program may be more technical.
But, since it takes a doctoral student several years after earning other degrees to be able to read "all" of the papers in some small specialized subfield of a larger field.
But even if you just consider the bulk of the problem note that it would probably take several years just to read definitions of all of the technical jargon of all of the world's research fields just one, never mind learning it so that it actually hangs together.
Can you read and understand all of the technical articles across fields just in Wikipedia?
A bachelors degree whether specialized as in UK or general as in US is enough to get you to the point where you can "begin" to understand the papers in a given field. But even then, a recent paper is probably based on several other earlier papers that also need to be understood to some extent so that the current one makes any sense at all.
This is partly why there are popularizers of many scientific fields such as Carl Sagan and Neil deGrasse Tyson, so that people can "get a sense" of a deep topic while not completely understanding it.
