Why are papers written? If I could push a button that would transmit everything I wanted to readers to get from my paper, what information would it have to send?

• Actual result: Here is an advance to the field (by me!) → the data, experiment, or simulation itself
• Reputation: Signaling importance, competence, creativity—value: not only the value of the work, but what it says about your value to the community
• Worldview advocating: The advance to the field is (or is made to be) further evidence for some position that I hold, be it philosophical, a position on where the field should be going or how science should be done, etc.
• Collaboration: Here is who I’m working with → signals author network, hierarchy, mentoring activity, how big/of what nature the collaboration was, etc.

The most obvious way to learn about a field as a new PhD student (or otherwise) is to read papers. Of course papers help you learn concepts and get up to date object-level stuff. But it’s also clear that they have many agendas besides disseminating an actual result and that objective object-level science can still mislead a naive reader by warping context. For example, is this theory contested, and what stands in the way of resolution? So far I have only been able to mildly resolve this by intentionally seeking out rebuttals…