Why do you read papers?

When I was a junior high school student, I misunderstood about advancement of science. At the time, i liked to read biographies of scientists. When I read such biographies, I thought the advancement of science is done by outstanding inspiration of genes. Unfortunately, I do not have chance to correct my misunderstood until I become a graduate student.

The occasion which made me remind of what is the advancement of science is that knowledge of earthquake and awareness of citation numbers. When I was in Japan, I belonged to engineering department. My research topic was, however, close to science rather than engineering. As geothermal system relate to magma, geology, and seismology, I need to read a lot of scientific paper.

When I read a blog of a volcanologist, I noticed that he addressed a name of seismologist who develop how to scale magnitude of earthquakes. I have heard his name and acievement. I did not know, however, his students write a text book based on his outstanding classes.
Since then, I began to notice the meaning of his job. His job was carried out in the discussion of definition of earthquake as science. At the days, source of earthquake was still in discussion. Their job was to deal with science quantitatively as science. Scaling of earthquake is the process of definition of earthquake by movement of faults. "Earthquake occurs in faults" should be science around 50 years ago.
Until then, "Earthquake occurs in faults" was commonsense for me. The fact is something established as science and it is not necessary to discuss it anymore at least for me. Partly, the recognition is correct. Even greatest professional paper do not be cited in any journals some day because it is accepted as common knowledge of human beings. However, it takes time and efforts of scientists until it is accepted. After I notice the very basic of science, science was not just collection of fact.

Modern Global Seismology, Volume 58 (International Geophysics)

"We dedicate This Book to Professor Hiroo Kanamori, Seismologist Extraordinaire"

Advancement of science have been conducted by publications. At the beginning of research, scientists have to read a lot of paper because if you want to do something new, your job should be based on previous works. In addition, you should not repeat what other scientists have done. You also should not wast time for unimportant things. In order to specify what you will do on research basis, you need to understand achievement of previous researchers in your own way. "0 to 1" is ideal, however, that occur only less than a few times for your life as a scientist. Richard Feynman, one of a famous nobel laureates in physics, said "I create something new only one time in my research life though some other scientist also think similar things!"

Surely You're Joking Mr Feynman: Adventures of a Curious Character as Told to Ralph Leighton

My Bible

One advantage of scientists in USA is they fully understand that the science should be based on communications through publications of professional journals. Fortunately, they read those journals as their mother tongue. I feel that is the great advantage.

The facts of science is not obvious. Even current common sense is controversial in a few decades ago. Proving something is not conducted by excellent sophistry but by continuous collection of evidence or interpretation with mathematics and physics. The huge amount of crystals of previous efforts of scientists consist of very important part of science.