Science Forums: timo - Viewing Profile - Science Forums

The "four fundamental forces" are better thought of as "four fundamental interactions". The term "force" is misleading in the sense that none of them is commonly described in a framework footing on the concept of "force" that you are familiar with from classical physics. It is not unambiguously true that "it takes energy to move things". For example, if you drop an object from some height the speed it has upon impact on the floor is usually evaluated from assuming that the total energy is constant.

That's presumably been it (I did check if I still find the thread, but apparently didn't go down far enough). Thanks. Happens that my reply was still my current paste element, so I didn't even have to rewrite it.

It's hard to define what "was supposed to be referenced in another paper" means. If you mean that I (as the author of the not-citing paper) really wanted to refer the respective work but forgot it due to carelessness, then I think the answer is "very seldom". If you interpret it more like the author realizing "well, in hindsight I could have also cited X", then I think we already approach a two-digit percentage - perhaps 50% if you include papers that the author only became aware of after publications. If you mean work that could have been referenced in principle, then we surely talk about almost 100% of the papers published. Actually, it sometimes happens that after publication you get a mail by someone (not a crackpot but a proper university researcher) kindly asking you to also consider a particular related paper of theirs. I've still not met anyone who could make real sense of such mails, though (do they ask to be cited? are they interested in a discussion of the topic? are they just trying to be helpful?).

Citing papers and attributing ideas is not an exact thing - I think anyone writing scientific publications will agree with this. There are weird rumors about non-existing papers having hundreds of citations because the authors of some influential paper made a typo in their citations and everyone just copied that citation without looking it up or even reading it. Also, scientific publication is not the only way that people get their ideas across (and also not the best). Scientists talk a lot to other colleagues, and speaking for me I learned much more about current research from a live discussion with visiting scientists, attending talks, and chatting with colleagues met at a conference than I did from reading research papers. This may in some cases lead to the effect that public referencing may not always be what a pure look at published material may indicate.

Oh, and what also is annoying is when you spend 20 minutes writing a reply, and upon submitting the system tells you that the thread no longer exists (as just happened).

Almost all of your questions seem to heavily depend on where you want to go and on personal details. Exceptions are "what are the best places/universities", that strongly depends on how you define "best", and the time a PhD takes, which is in the order of 3-6 years for biology (on average and depending where you go).

My advice to get started with collection of information (which is just an advice, not the only possible way to go) would be the following: Take your favorite papers (assuming Indian master's students do read research papers - otherwise just google up some that sound interesting). Look up the academic affiliation of the authors. Check the PhD program requirements of their universities and the countries they lie in. From there on, search paths for further information should become obvious.