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It’s okay for an article to be slightly vague or not in depth. It’s not okay for it to be factually wrong. It’s better to not read it at all at that point

• FabHK 5y ago
  But that is not true. When learning a field, you must first learn the terminology. Then the big picture and general rules of thumb. Then the details and exceptions. If an article can convey some of the former, you're smarter than before. Not as smart as an expert, of course! But how can one short article turn you into an expert? That is an unreasonable goal. Every summary of a complex topic will contain and gloss over some factual errors. Take, for example, an article explaining big-O notation and conveying that sorting can't be faster than O(n log n). Now, you, as an expert, say, "Well, that's not true, that only applies to algorithms with pairwise comparison; we can do better if the domain is very restricted and known a priori, etc. etc.". Fair enough. But still better than not having read the article. In fact, I think that The Economist does exceptionally well on that front. It will introduce a topic to you, outline the major questions/developments/points of contention, summarised from talking to several experts, and then often (quite opinionated) give a verdict. You should not take it as gospel, obviously, but it would often reflect the consensus of the experts (of a certain school, sure), but also give you enough background and opposing positions that you can do your own research to dive deeper if you so wish.