> any such effort would be less trustworthy than the original publication.
The idea that scrutiny would be less reliable than blind trust is absurd. The question in the OP, for example, could have been in the comments sections of these papers.
The idea that scrutiny would be less reliable than blind trust is absurd. The question in the OP, for example, could have been in the comments sections of these papers.
A comment from any random person (in general) holds a lower level of trustworthiness.
“Any random person” includes many researchers, including phd holders or just random people with time on their hands, but whose commentary could be judged on its own merits, not by some credentials or stamp of approval from journals that don’t even examine the data used by studies they publish. This does not mean that comments should go completely unmoderated.
As far as I’ve seen, no journal does a thorough examination of data referenced by studies it publishes.
Credentials, papers, citations, and studies do little to increase the levels of trustworthiness precisely because papers like these are not publicly scrutinized.