How to begin a critical reading of a scientific article

Evidence-based medicine (EBM) is a systematic process of searching for, evaluating, and using the results of biomedical research as an essential basis for decision making in clinical practice through a methodology of information analysis, primarily from clinical trials, but not just any clinical trial, but those conducted in a prospective, controlled, and randomized manner.

Critical reading of a scientific article is included as one of the basic pillars of EBM, which consists of evaluating and interpreting the evidence provided by the scientific literature, systematically considering the results presented, their validity and their relevance to the work itself. Critical reading is a tool that will help us to eliminate in the shortest possible time the scientific articles of poor quality and to accept only those with sufficient scientific quality to help us in our decision making for patient care.

Reading articles that do not have sufficient potential and validity is time-consuming and distorts knowledge. These are the questions that every scientific article should answer for a preliminary evaluation of its quality and that you should ask yourself before starting to read the article in depth.