If a paper doesn't link back to its foundations directly (citations) and clarify its assumptions, that isn't the fault of the reader.
One really dumb thing that many academics do is, in an effort to be respected in their field or accepted to a solid paper or a good conference, they write obscurely. With very few exceptions, this results in bad science writing because the point of science writing is to express clearly and precisely the steps and formulations that lead to an ideological or project accomplishment. But that bad writing doesn't make the paper less intelligible for normal people. It simply makes it take longer to read, for a typical person.
One of the reasons it's easier to understand research than to do it, is that it's easier to verify a solution than to create it. This is the famous Columbus' Egg, and it is a principle that should be well known to computer scientists who understand the time complexity of verification versus solution.
So, I argue that basic science literacy is enough to understand and critique. Verification of an idea is different than creating it. Papers that don't reference how they fit into their field are flawed in a way that can't be blamed on the reader. Obscure, bad writing doesn't change the meaning of a paper, even if it hides it. And the basic tool of science is a pretty accessible idea.
Because it appear to me that papers like (picking one from the front page of cell.com) http://www.cell.com/molecular-cell/fulltext/S1097-2765(18)30... "A Metabolic Basis for Endothelial-to-Mesenchymal Transition" require a lot of specialized knowledge to understand.
The same for https://arxiv.org/abs/1802.02935 "Suppression and revival of long-range ferromagnetic order in the multiorbital Fermi-Hubbard model", picked from a recent arxiv.org preprint in condensed matter physics.
Or "High-Content Surface and Total Expression siRNA Kinase Library Screen with VX-809 Treatment Reveals Kinase Targets that Enhance F508del-CFTR Rescue" from https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.molpharmaceut.7b00928 .
What does "critique it creatively" mean?
I remember how long it took me, as a young smithling in graduate school, to read a scientific paper, in the field I was entering, where I had several years of education. It took a while to understand the literature, and even longer to be able to critique the literature in any more than superficial way.
I don't follow your comment "If a paper doesn't link back to its foundations directly". Papers are often like a skyscraper. The 50th floor links back to the 49th, which links back to the 48th. There are support structures which might span a few dozen floors, and (to stretch the analogy), express elevators connecting it to the ground floor.
But few papers really reference the foundations, because the audience is expected to know the foundations.
People have endless time to become experts on quackery and pop science; wouldn't it be nice to start seeing people who have taken up actual science as a hobby, and take it seriously enough to hold themselves to the same standards as professionals - or as seriously as the 20-somethings that are often writing these things?
Also, plenty of people get professional training, and end up working outside of the field. What if they want to continue learning? Is it somehow physically impossible for them to understand journal articles if they are not connected to an institution with journal subscriptions, even with training?
Take a look at the other articles in the current issue of Cell, at http://www.cell.com/cell/current . (This is one of the journals with the highest impact factors, so is less likely to consider the deliberately opaque language you mention.) You'll see the one I gave was not even the densest in that issue. Here are the titles to some of the others:
"Fast-Spiking Interneurons Supply Feedforward Control of Bursting, Calcium, and Plasticity for Efficient Learning", "In Situ Structure of Neuronal C9orf72 Poly-GA Aggregates Reveals Proteasome Recruitment", "5-HT2C Receptor Structures Reveal the Structural Basis of GPCR Polypharmacology", "Abstract Image Multiscale Structuring of the E. coli Chromosome by Nucleoid-Associated and Condensin Proteins", or "KRAS Dimerization Impacts MEK Inhibitor Sensitivity and Oncogenic Activity of Mutant KRAS".
I submit that your original statement, that "most people who studied an empirical discipline in college and did ok (good school and/or good grades) can pick up a paper and, using the internet, understand and critique it creatively within three weeks." is woefully undervaluing the expertise needed for each field.
I have 3 years of post-graduate education in physics. I can't read a chemistry paper for the life of me. I never even took organic chemistry. I find the idea that I can critique a paper on, say, some new reaction, with only a few weeks of internet-based research, to be ludicrous.
I note that you appear to have changed your statement. Originally it was just college, and now it's "another 3-4 years of post-graduate education." Originally it was "creatively within three weeks" and now it's "understand journal articles" with no time limit.
It feels like you think my objection to your original claim is representative of some absolute stance of mine against amateurism. As an amateur historian, I do not see how you have made that shift, nor do hold that opinion.
I don't understand the relevancy of your second paragraph at all. People get into quackery and pop science because it seems easy, and it comes with the built-in belief that experts are wrong and can be ignored.
If anything, it is the quacks and fringe science people who believe that three weeks of research is enough for them to be able to critique the standard views on evolution, global warming, chemtrails, pyramid construction, shape of the earth, etc., and critique to such a level that they should be listened to.
Nor do I understand the relevancy of your third paragraph. Could you clarify how you drew that inference from what I wrote? I am not connected to an institution with journal subscriptions yet I read and understand journal articles (acquired through ILL, links from Google Scholar, and yes, even Sci-Hub), so obviously I think it's physically possible for that to happen.
Are you sure you haven't just misunderstood my previous comment?
I'm pretty much going where most HN comment threads go - nowhere.
Where are you going by making a metacomment?
I assume it means to critique it using modern interpretive dance.
I suspect there are insufficient focused waking hours in a three week period for any old university graduate to achieve that.
If I branch out into a nearby sub-discipline I end up spending a lot of time reading a lot of papers just to get sufficient context to make sense of a single paper, and that is starting from a base of knowledge of the broader discipline accumulated by someone several years post-PhD.
Even for practicing scientists, non-superficial critique of anything outside of ones immediate area of expertise takes work.
To work efficiently in your own sub-discipline, you have to be at the point where you can see references to Smith & Jones (1992) and implicitly know what that paper is about, and why it is referenced. That takes experience (you have to have read a lot of papers so you are already familiar with a reasonable portion of the references in a given paper) and you have to be practicing, (or at least I have to), otherwise you start to forget.
To most neophytes that is. We only need a few of those with recently gained access to turn out to be a dormant Newton or Einstein. Society as a whole gets a better bargain.
That very much depends on how you define "neophyte" and what field you're talking about. You don't need to be a doctor to make sense of most clinical trials, you just need a reasonable education in statistics. A mechanical engineer can usefully learn from a lot of materials science or fluid dynamics research. Our society is increasingly well-educated, which creates a huge number of people who can make use of sci-hub in one way or another.
If you're writing papers that are of no use whatsoever to anyone outside of a tiny coterie of specialists in your field, then either you're doing absolutely cutting-edge theoretical work or you're just really bad at writing papers.
I've learned a lot about things I never thought I would be interested in by searching for terms and maths that I saw in papers and didn't understand.
It's not like I've become an expert in anything new, but it gets me thinking about all kinds of interesting things. It makes me want to go back to school, and reinforces the idea that I could create more if I did.
So I know that not everyone sees it this way, but I think that gating the means to easily access that sort of aspirational hope and inspiration is reprehensible.
The other thing is that it's not just neophytes without access. Heck, even in-academia researchers often have insufficient access (I recently spoke to someone at Nancy, France, which is wealthy enough), let alone the droves of former academics.
>science becomes accessible to everyone with basic scientific literacy
The thing is most research papers are simply not accessible to neophytes; you often need to dedicate a significant portion of your life to the study of a given field in order to understand and critically evaluate the latest research in that field. It's not that academics are sitting in a high throne, dictating what is truth and what is not, its that you need to be an academic with many years of formation in order to understand, let alone improve, the research that is being undertaken. A "basic science literacy" isn't enough.
Still, it's very positive that, in principle, anyone can grab a book or three of libgen, study hard, become knowledgeable in the field, then grab as many papers as they want off libgen and read and interpret them. That's undoubtedly very positive.