Yes, I agree, that is also my understanding. But convenience sample is sometimes a bad choice for assessing a hypothesis. So I think these studies are very imp

Yes, I agree, that is also my understanding. But convenience sample is sometimes a bad choice for assessing a hypothesis. So I think these studies are very important for pushing the understanding futher but also they should be treated as you say "initial assessment". In general I think science communication needs to be fixed or improved. We are now in a time where general public can access them. And this is very good and more should be done for this. But also the structure of how we present these studies should be adapted. Just publishing open a paper following this legacy structure and wording is not enough. I think the structure of a published paper should be changed to include quality assessments like for example (and this is only an example): After Abstract we should always have a Method Summary with the following information: a. Original Article | Secondary Article | Replica of Z | b. Replicated | Not replicated yet | Replicated by Y,Z,T ... c. Small Group Sample | Large Group Sample | d. Convenience Sample | (Simple, Stratified, Clustered) Random Sample | ... e. Observational | Experimental | Self-Reporting f. Limitations of this paper: .... Or something like this. Few people read (or have the know-how) to read the papers and also understand how to use that into a decision making process taking into consideration limitations. Edit: added clarify about what I meant with my critique of convenience sample.