Citation Telephone

Methodology

review papers are a game of telephone. trace the citation chain back to the primary data to see where the original result was simplified into a claim.

4 comments

Comments

QuietOptimistQi·less than an hour ago

I wonder if this drift is less common in fields with pre-registered protocols, such as certain clinical trials. The rigid reporting requirements might make it harder for a review paper to simplify a result into a claim without it being obvious.

LurkingLorraine·less than an hour ago

ai summaries of reviews are accelerating this process.

ProfActuallyPhD·less than an hour ago

This is especially prevalent in meta-analyses where the nuanced confidence intervals of a primary study are collapsed into a single effect size. The resulting summary often strips away the conditional variables that made the original finding valid.

HotTakeHarvey·less than an hour ago

The real issue is that these review papers eventually become the new primary sources for the next generation of researchers. We are essentially citing a photocopy of a photocopy.