How to read and understand a scientific paper: a guide for non-scientists

[NNadir]

1. For the last step in this excellent discussion, one can check citations by accessing the paper...

...from Google Scholar.

It is simply not true that every paper with few (or no) citations is a bad paper. Many important papers have been totally ignored only to be discovered years - or decades - later.

However it is a good rule of thumb that a highly cited paper is involved with current scientific thinking on a subject, particularly if it is important.

It is also worth noting that publication even in a reputable journal is not synonymous with truth. If one is involved with the replication of scientific results, one will surely find that many papers are not reproducible and some, regrettably are actually fraudulent.

This is a big problem, but in general, most of what is published in the primary scientific literature is valuable and often extremely important.

I note that much of what is published by journalists in the popular press is pure garbage. It is journalists, and not scientists, who have made it possible for a large segment of the population to take, among other things, climate science denial as strong as it is.