4 ms·
The thing you are missing here is that citations are often intentionally ambiguous as to whether they are neutral or negative. Or, phrased differently, there i
by davidgay 4y ago
The thing you are missing here is that citations are often intentionally ambiguous as to whether they are neutral or negative.
Or, phrased differently, there is essentially no possible benefit for a researcher to say "this piece of related work is junk". Let the readers decide or infer instead.
- ThrowawayTestr 4y agoI think that's important to consider. It's kinda presumptuous to explicitly say someone is wrong. Safer to let the data speak for itself.
- mattkrause 4y agoIt's more nuanced than that: it may not even be obvious if someone is actually wrong. Most citations discuss related work, rather than direct replications; the latter are incredibly rare in most fields. As a result, the authors are piecing together a theory using data from many groups, each using different species, different techniques, and different conditions. Some of these might reflect legitimate differences between perfectly conducted, reasonably interpreted experiments.
- epgui 4y agoThey wouldn’t say it like that, but there are plenty of citations that easily fall in the bucket of negative treatment, at least in biochem, health science, environment and ecology... What you describe is a neutral treatment, and is probably the most prevalent type of citation.