Comment by jerf

Well, on the flip side, I had a couple of classes in which we were supposed to "critique" papers, for the laudable purpose of learning critical thinking skills and how to evaluate papers.

We also were supposed to read the greatest papers in the field to learn about the field from the primary sources, also a laudable purpose.

Unfortunately, these two things were put together, and we were expected to produce "critiques" of the greatest papers in the field.

Now, I've told this story a couple of times, and always some anklebiter jumps up from the replies to point out that even the greatest papers can have mistakes or be improved or whatever. Which is in principle true. But when Einstein comes up to you and for the first time in world history explicates his new theory of relativity, you aren't doing him, yourself, or the world a favor by "critiquing" his choice of variable names, quibbling about his phrasing, or criticizing him for not immediately knowing how to explain it the way physicists will explain it after over 120 years of chewing on it.

In practice, there is no practical way to "critique" these papers. They are the ones that have slugged it out with hundreds of thousands of other papers to be getting recommended to undergraduate students 20-40 years later. There is no reason to believe that anything a college junior, even one from decades down the line, is going to give any suggestions that can improve such papers.

So what I learned is that I can just deploy a formula: 1. Summarize the paper quickly, ideally with some tidbit in it that proves you really read it 2. Use my decades of foresight to complain that the author didn't do in this paper something the field built on it later, quite possibly led by the same author (I dunno, I didn't check of course, I'm just complaining) 3. Say "more research is needed"... it's a cliche for a reason -> Get an A every single time, despite putting no real cognitive effort into the critique.

I did at least read the papers for real, and that was fine, but my "critique" was 100% presentation, 100% genuflection of the ritual words of science, knowingly shorn of meaning. Heck, even now I don't think I feel bad about that; I just delivered what was asked for, after raising the objection once. At least we read some of the literature, and that is a skill that has served me for real, in real life, even though I did not go into academia proper.