Read the paper; ask someone else who read the paper :-) Your best bet would be to find a review paper that cites Smith (2015) and see how they interpret it and

Read the paper; ask someone else who read the paper :-) Your best bet would be to find a review paper that cites Smith (2015) and see how they interpret it and how Smith (2015)'s conclusions jibe with the rest of the review. A few review series even use little icons to indicate "important" and "crucial" papers. Even there, you've got to be careful that you haven't fallen into some weird fringe-y subfield though. Raw bibliometrics aren't totally useless--I'd bet most bad work is ignored, rather than refuted--but I'm really skeptical that anyone can automatically put a valance onto most citations.