Well, I see your point, but I think that's actually more a matter of how exactly you define "truth" and of colloquial use of language. If a paper has obvious e

Well, I see your point, but I think that's actually more a matter of how exactly you define "truth" and of colloquial use of language. If a paper has obvious errors in it that make it highly questionable whether any of the results are reliable, then you wouldn't call that profound, would you? I mean, it must be at the very least plausible that it's true after some critical reading. And I'd even go further: For example, a paper can be profound because of a new perspective, even if the specific results are actually wrong. But the reason that it is still considered profound is because the new perspective still "has truth to it", in the sense that it matches reality well enough to be a useful tool for generating future results. From someone who doesn't have sufficient knowledge to judge the reliability of some result, I would indeed expect them to say something along the lines "this might be profound". Also, if a paper that at some point is considered profound turns out to be completely untrue and useless, people would probably stop refering to it as profound? Which is all in contrast to some "feeling of profundity", which really might be a purely emotional matter.