Reading a Paper Without Drowning · Lesson 3 of 4
Finding the claim, then the evidence for it
Write the central claim in one sentence, in your own words, without looking. If you cannot, you have not understood it yet, and no amount of rereading the discussion will fix that — go back to the results.
Then ask the plain question: what would have to be true for this claim to hold, and did they show it? How many people, what was compared with what, and whether the thing measured is really the thing being claimed. You do not need to be a statistician to notice that a study of forty people is being described as though it settled the matter.
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