No... don't agree at all... I use a statistical software called R. We need to cite papers that reference particular packages in this software. To read them would be madness - they are about how they were developed, troubleshooting etc. We follow online tutorials as a guide to how to use functions within the packages - the paper citing part is simply to acknowledge who developed it.

I am not talking about software packages.

Just an example of where you can cite scientific papers without having read them. It isn't just black and white - there are several grey areas.

You are scraping the barrel here with this example :-) Knowledge of the statistical method and interpretation of the result is the crucial thing in your example. How the software efficiently makes the calculations for specific hardware platforms is barely relevant.

Do you have any good examples where knowledge contained within a paper is crucial to understanding the science?

No - of course not - who on earth would want to cite a paper they hadn't read that was crucial to understanding the science? :-0

I get your point though - and I think we agree on this. Lol :)

:-D

...and in fairness I get your point as well.