Quote From Tudor_Queen:
I also cite lots of statistics papers that I've never read... I need to acknowledge them because they authored the approach or the program... but in most cases reading them would be a complete waste of time! : )
starryeyed has explained the problem above. Your approach risks ending in the precise problem described in the news article above. The credibility of any researchers involved in this sloppiness has been destroyed with a risk of retracted papers and the end of their career.
Of course there is "accepted wisdom" but you should not reference the original papers if you can't verify them for yourself.
I can show you how I get around this via an example.
The whole of Chemistry is based on the Born-Oppenheimer approach. The original paper for this is in Geman and I cannot read German. If I want to work on approaches for which the Born Oppenheimer approximation breaks down and is no longer valid then I have a problem in terms of referencing. I have two solutions. The most obvious one is to take advantage of an English translation of the original paper. I then reference the translation paper. That paper would subsequently reference the original and the path is complete without me having to reference a paper i cannot read. The second approach involves referencing a secondary source such as a book which describes the information I want. Again the book should be referencing the original paper as per their responsibilities to science.
Thee may be other approaches but referencing literature you have not read is misconduct at best and at worst it means the papers of those who engage in it cannot be trusted as legitimate research resources becaue the authors cannot know for certain if what they are talking about is valid other than through hearsay. That might be OK for the general public in their daily lives but as professional researchers it is our job to be pedantic on things like this. If we dont do it, nobody else will do it.
