i somewhat dislike this idea. it seems like it treats scientific papers as independent, isolated containers of reliable facts which can be reliably and authorit

i somewhat dislike this idea. it seems like it treats scientific papers as independent, isolated containers of reliable facts which can be reliably and authoritatively cited without any need for context. This is a really common way of reading scientific papers, but I think it is ultimately harmful: I believe it contributed to the replication crisis as well as terrible scientific journalism in the popular press. Current scientific papers certainly do not meet this standard and I'm not sure it's even possible or desirable to require that they do. Ultimately, I think we just have to accept that scientific papers only really make sense as part of a large body of scientific literature, to which they are responding and which respond to them. The problem is a lot of people would rather just pick one or a few papers, cite them to justify a claim with total certainty, and then move on. I worry about encouraging this tendency.