Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by dmbche 1147 days ago
Sticking to what you want to understand - for example, when reading a paper, you don't necessarily need to read the methodology, especially if it's out of your field. Read the abstract and the conclusion, identify any part of it that you are suprised by and would like further explanation, and go see that part of the paper.

A lot of the paper is talking to peer and people wanting to verify the validity of the paper - by it being peer reviewed, you can mostly assume that the paper is valid, and stick to what the paper is saying instead of it's methodology.
2 comments
abdou4a 1147 days ago
>> you can mostly assume that the paper is valid

you should check this

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Replication_crisis

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_dredging or P-hacking

and many more...

link
dmbche 1146 days ago
Yes! I'm well aware of the replication crisis.

While this is valid, this shouldn't make us paranoid of all papers. If it's a paper out of your expertise, it's unlikely that you would be able to catch problems with it that the peer review process wouldn't have caught.

So in practice, it doesn't really change the way you interact with papers - it should change the way people write them and how the peer review process works.

link
noduerme 1147 days ago
>> you can mostly assume that the paper is valid

What? Is that something you can still assume in 2023?

link