This is why I hate it so much when authors overstate their findings in abstract, which unfortunately is extremely common in medicine.
Not just medicine, it’s common especially among celebrity scientists but they’re too famous to be called out. Doug Tallamy comes to mind.
As a scientific researcher I am amazed at everyone being all like “yeah me too.”
#WHAT
How you about to be citing something without being 100% sure it actually supports your claim? That shit could easily have a bunch of qualifications you don’t know about!
#ALSO
Bruh. If it’s worth citing, it’s worth reading the whole paper. You might learn something or gain inspiration for future work. Plus, you know, always be learnin, yo.
…
You guys are gonna hate me.
I was aiding in a peer review and was diligently checking citations and sources to find that the majority of sources used had relevant titles but did not support the claims the author was making… I pointed these out and was removed from reviewing with the professor saying I needed to offer positive comments only ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I am sorry, but what is wrong with your professor? You were doing exactly what you are supposed to do in a peer review. You should go look for things that are wrong or should be improved and only if the paper can withstand that process, it should be published. Only providing positive comments is really harmful to the scientific process and, in the end, to society.
To be honest, I think I reject more than half of the papers that I review. The rest require major or minor revision. It is not that I have a target or anything for how many I need to reject, it is just that most papers are of such low quality that I cannot do anything else. I think the number of papers I reject is quite normal in my field.
So, not all your comments need to be positive. If there is reason to be positive, you should mention it. And your comments should be constructive and respectful, but definitely not always positive.
In the case you are describing where the authors seem to only have read the titles of the papers, I would definitely reject. This is fraud. You are saying you did a literature study and you did not. So, I would be quite clear about that. I would also be a bit angry that they wasted my time. So, in my opinion, that is how a reviewer should respond in this situation, not with only positive comments.
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Sometimes. Sometimes it’s an intro sentence that already has 2 citations and just needs a 3rd, and you just find a paper with more measurements and the same conclusions.
Ain’t nobody reading papers they quote. Academics are frauds.
Oh, I did not know that. I have been doing it wrong all these years then. Could have been drinking cocktails on the beach instead of reading all these papers.
Best I can do is abstract and discussion. Take it or leave it.
don’t forget skimming the paper for quotes and or handy graphs if you’re feeling ambitious
TIL I was ambitious. And here I thought my attitude of, “I can skip these 2 papers and still have a solid C,” made me kind of a bum. NOPE! I skimmed so many papers.
I cited research I had no access to but read the paragraph in wikipedia that cited it and copied its citation
I got called out on that once in a seminar.
Doesn’t work if, like in my line of work, you have to cite specific locations in each paper for data verification. Sci-hub is your friend, when it works
There was a specific number that was repeated across a lot of papers in my field, always citing the same source.
That source did have the number, but it cited another paper for it, which itself cited yet an older paper. Im not sure where the citations went bad, but that last paper for not actually contain the value everyone waschain-attributing to it.
The number was fortunately still correct though (and people would have noticed pretty quickly if it wasn’t).
I was recently cited for quoting a statistic. Thankfully the statistic was accurate.
Now I am the xerox of a xerox.
Is that a situation where you can write up your analysis, report the number as correct… and start getting cited in place of the paper with broken attributions?
If there is, I sure as shit don’t know.
Honestly if the abstract can’t deliver a succinct and accurate summary of the findings and their limitations, then it’s probably a bad paper that you wouldn’t want to cite.
To be fair, a lot of good researchers have trouble creating succinct abstracts.
Playing 4D chess here - I write what I already think, find someone else who said it, and reference them.
Sometimes it pays off checking methods too.
Lol at that paper.
My favorite part about Dunning-Kruger is that I see extremely wrong explanations of it all the time. While being wrong isn’t exactly what Dunning-Kruger is about, it’s usually what those wrong explanations think it’s about.
It’s almost like you should read the whole paper.
Or cite their work based on titles… Meh, close enough.
Can confirm, my professor wife say yes, this is what she does.
Hey gibberdee rewrite this paper as Dr Seus
Wait… Babe? She looks 15.
Okay, but she’s about 29.
