Have most people read a paper? I see threads like these with some many interesting suggestion, but are they read by people outside of their general area of study or expertise? I read quite a bit of fiction, but I've never really been able to read anything much past an abstract which much understanding. I have no science background. Am I missout on something?
Generally you need background knowledge to read papers. A quick way to gain necessary background knowledge is to read literature reviews or surveys. If you can't understand even reviews, surveys, or introductions, it is time to read textbooks.
Solid advice. It's hard to break into a new field, but it helps to read/skim a lot of papers to get the vocabulary and then slowly assign meaning to the words. What you'll find over and over is that many concepts are the same across many fields, but invariably gets different names.
