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That's ostensibly silly, though. What if someone mentions paper X and you haven't read it? How would you know a priori that X is bad? You always need to read a
by jonathanstrange 8y ago
That's ostensibly silly, though. What if someone mentions paper X and you haven't read it? How would you know a priori that X is bad?
You always need to read all relevant literature to be able to constructively participate in a debate.
- mattmanser 8y agoThe whole point is to clear what he calls "mud moats", a vast amount of literature that protects an idea from criticism. Non-adherents can't attack an idea because someone simply says "well have you read X paper? No? Well, then you need to read more.". And then when you can back and say "but this paper is wrong too", the process just repeats.
- jonathanstrange 8y agoMaybe that's a problem in pub discussion with certain kinds of people, but those have nothing to do with science anyway. You can always criticize whatever you like by publishing a critical paper - preferably one in which you also lay out a better approach or present more solid data and statistics. However, if you show you haven't engaged with the relevant literature and don't address the arguments in sufficient detail, then your paper is likely not going to pass peer review, and rightly so.