Emil O W Kirkegaard

It's a big mistake to think it's insulting to treat people according to their ability. People who believe in homeopathy and the power of crystal beads will only injure themselves if they study the medical literature in order to design their own treatments.

In a more general take, I am skeptical that any insight can be gained by reading more than the abstract of a paper, if you are not a researcher.

I'm not a researcher and my understanding of statistics is basic but I read social science articles and I get quite a bit out of seeing what the covariates are, the full table of regression coefficients for different models...Some findings don't make it into the abstract

I guess my skepticism is more broad. (And I thought we were talking about health research.) I am skeptical about the impact of even knowing and understanding all these tables. Scientists and economists often don't even agree about the overall conclusions that can be drawn.

What chance do normal people have then? Can they read the research better than these trained and experienced people who disagree with each other?

I think in some uncommon cases, yes. And then it would be best if they shared their insights. But in the vast majority of the time, its not useful for them.

Those that look at articles regularly is a filter. I'd argue that those that look at articles regularly do get substantive information out of it. I'm one of them. Though I'm doing a MS in stats so take with salt.

Yes. I'm talking about the 90% of the population who, for instance, would never even see this thread.