The 2025 Ig Nobel awards have just been announced. Someone at work had posted a link to the winner in the Physics category, which is a study of the clumping properties of Cacio e Pepe sauce, and I read the original source article. Apart from the physics involved, and the recipe suggestions, what struck me was how very readable the article is. The introduction and literature review is particularly to the point. As someone who knows a bit about cooking and the science involved, it does a nice job of setting the scene, and situating the current research in an up-to-date body of knowledge.
It reminded me of a recent article by Catherine E. De Vries: “Most Literature Reviews Miss the Point. Don’t Let Yours” (I’m afraid I don’t remember where I came across the article for a “via” link.) When doing my psychology diploma, I always found literature reviews both hard to read and to write. I understood that they had to be there, but I didn’t understand at a gut level why. A good literature review (like the one above) is a joy to read, though, and can sometimes provide the reader with more insight than the main paper itself. De Vries writes:
Too often, the literature review is treated as a box to tick before “real” writing begins. I think that’s a mistake. A literature review isn’t the background, it’s our orientation. It shows where we stand and why our next step matters.
[…]
The entrepreneur Steve Jobs once said: “You can’t connect the dots looking forward, you can only connect them looking backward.” A literature review is exactly that. We trace ideas backward, not out of nostalgia, but because doing so reveals the logic of where others have been, and what still needs to be built. We begin to see which things repeat, which evidence holds, and which questions remain unanswered.
Our question becomes less a leap of faith, and more an inevitable next step. We don’t invent it. We see it, emerging from the structure we’ve laid bare.
I think I kinda get it now!