Probably if you haven’t really learned how to read the result section, then it’s better to read the abstract, introduction and then skip to the discussion/concl

Probably if you haven’t really learned how to read the result section, then it’s better to read the abstract, introduction and then skip to the discussion/conclusion. If you don’t really understand the method or results though, it’s harder to know if what you’re reading is pure bullshit. I actually had to be taught how to read and understand the results sections of research papers and I would rate my current skills at like a real basic level, and only in psychology where I have a basic understanding of the descriptive statistics, effect sizes, correlations, regressions and a basic understanding of factor analysis. I’m still actually working on having a deep enough level of understanding that I could critically analyse a research paper. There’s other ways to ascertain whether a paper is garbage, like if it was published in a journal with a low impact factor and a high acceptance rate for publication - that can be an indication, but really unless you can understand the lingo and the sometimes very mathematical results section it can be quite hard to know if what your reading is worth the time of day.