[j7ake]

It is difficult to evaluate a single paper without thinking how this paper fits in the broader context and field.

Evaluating a paper involves having spent several years reading many papers and understanding where the field is and where the major challenges are.

Trying to read a single paper in isolation from all the others would lead to over interpretation of the results.

This is why many graduate courses often just involve reading the latest literature and discussing it as a group. Discussing a paper as a group, especially with the presence of a few senior people helps to put the paper in a larger context (because the group together have read more papers than an individual). This greatly accelerated a PhD students understanding of the current state of the art in order to define what are the most interesting next questions.

Overall though, most scientific papers are meant for scientists and the point of them is to figure out whether there is some new idea that can lead to new directions or inquiry. For non practicing scientists, review papers are the way to go because they summarise many papers and try to put them into the context of the open questions.