Finding the actual info is not terribly difficult: Google Scholar and Pubmed, maybe with some of the arxivs.
The trick is interpreting it and putting it into context. A paper will report the results of one specific experiment, and it’s very rarely exactly what you want. Understanding how a result will generalize to other conditions is tricky, even for experts: there are tons of weird feedback loops, unusual dynamics, and other traps for the unwary (plus badly designed experiments and the occasional legit Type I error). For example, doubling the amount of a substance almost never doubles its effect, and in some cases, the effects aren’t even monotonic: ~75% alcohol, for example, is a much better disinfectant than 50 or 100%.
With time—-and lots of paper-reading, you do eventually develop a sense for what factors might matter and how you could check.
Depends on how deep you want to go. You need to find out what people are working on, and you do this by searching on PubMed and talking to people working in that field.
This sounds similar to what my friends in academia describe while exploring their fields. They build an impressive repository of knowledge regarding who's working on different topics/subfields over time. This may be one advantage of pursuing a PhD. Would be cool to see someone make the process of acclimating to a new field more accessible.
The trick is interpreting it and putting it into context. A paper will report the results of one specific experiment, and it’s very rarely exactly what you want. Understanding how a result will generalize to other conditions is tricky, even for experts: there are tons of weird feedback loops, unusual dynamics, and other traps for the unwary (plus badly designed experiments and the occasional legit Type I error). For example, doubling the amount of a substance almost never doubles its effect, and in some cases, the effects aren’t even monotonic: ~75% alcohol, for example, is a much better disinfectant than 50 or 100%.
With time—-and lots of paper-reading, you do eventually develop a sense for what factors might matter and how you could check.