The good papers are still out there but it's hard to slog through the mediocre or downright worthless stuff if you're not an expert in the field. That's a real

The good papers are still out there but it's hard to slog through the mediocre or downright worthless stuff if you're not an expert in the field. That's a real problem, I think, even venturing into an adjacent field takes a lot of reading and sorting through the chaff unless you have someone to guide you. And number of citations is not a great metric to figure out what's worth reading. By its nature, science and R&D is very incremental though. I have some sympathy for the PhD student wanting to get something published (or the prof wanting to get the PhD student to publish) and 5 or even 10 years is short for truly groundbreaking results.