| I mean I think peer review kind of is fundamentally broken, but at the same time this phenomenon isn't necessarily a sign of it. Even within technical papers, let alone pop writing or internet discussions, many of the claims citations are provided for are broad e.g. "X can increase people's anxiety". A very rigorous study might exist showing that when X happens a specific way it does increase some form of anxiety in some specific subset of the population, but using it as a citation for the broad statement without further context can be misleading at times. It's in fact possible that by considering different subsets of the same statement you'd get an opposite directional effect. That can certainly be used to confuse people, especially in a situation where it is unlikely most readers will dive deeply into the cited works. As far as nit picking - the same general principle applies. There will always be some tradeoff between scope, rigor, and available resources to do the study. If we waited for papers to be perfect in both correctness and interestingness/utility there would be almost nothing to ever publish. So I think the systemic problem here is moreso an undervaluing of review article and text book type resources (both reading them and writing them) in favor of vomiting out random individual paper citations for whatever claim. Science needs more heterogeneity in the roles different PIs fill for the system. Improving peer review process would be great (and might indirectly help), but I don't feel it's the root. |