Recently I had the privilege of delivering the inaugural talk for VitalScope, a new journal club at University of Karachi's Department of Physiology. The theme — "From Chaos to Comprehension: Understanding the Brain through Entropy" — was deliberate. Entropy is not only a measure of disorder in physics; it is also a clarifying metaphor for scholarship. In research, we move from scattered claims and conflicting data toward structured understanding. A good journal club is the engine of that movement.

In Pakistani universities, we often celebrate the product of research — impact factors, rankings and headlines — more than the process that produces reliable knowledge. VitalScope is a reminder that responsible science begins with disciplined reading. It insists that students learn not only what a paper says but how it argues, why its methods deserve trust, and where its claims fit in the larger map of evidence. That habit protects us from fads, predatory publishing and the all-too-common temptation to cherry-pick........

© The Express Tribune