Reading research · Lesson 2 of 3

Level 3: does the conclusion follow?

Ask what was measured, who is missing, whether the design can support the claim, and whether the abstract matches the results.

9 min read · Free — no account needed to read

Critical reading is where you stop asking what the paper says and start asking whether it holds. It takes an hour or more and is reserved for papers that matter to your argument.

What exactly was measured? Go to the methods, find the operational definition, and compare it with the construct in the abstract. The gap between them is frequently the whole story.

Is the sample appropriate, and who is missing? Who was eligible, who agreed, who dropped out, and is any of that related to the outcome?

Is the design capable of supporting the claim? A cross-sectional survey cannot establish what came first. No comparison group means no causal claim, whatever the discussion says.

What alternative explanations exist, and did they address them? Confounders, reverse causation, selection. This is module 05 applied to a specific paper, and it is the highest-value question on the list.

Do the conclusions exceed the evidence? Read the results section and the abstract side by side. Hedged findings become confident claims between the two remarkably often, and the abstract is what everybody cites.

What do the authors say they cannot conclude? Their own limitations section is honest more often than people expect, and it is routinely skipped by readers who then overstate the paper on the authors' behalf.

Critical reading is not hostile. Most papers have real limitations and remain worth something — the output is a calibrated view of what this paper can support, not a verdict.

See it happen

A paper you want to build on concludes that "flexible working improves employee wellbeing".

The read that arrives on its own

It is peer-reviewed and directly on point, so cite it in support of your argument.

The same situation, with this idea

You read it critically. Cross-sectional survey; wellbeing measured with three self-report items; companies offering flexible working compared with those not. So the design cannot establish direction — it is equally consistent with healthier, better-resourced organisations being the ones that offer flexibility. The authors say so in their limitations. The abstract does not. You cite it accurately as an association, which is what it found.

After this, you can

compare the results section with the abstract before citing either.

The takeaway

Ask what was measured, who is missing, whether the design can support the claim, and whether the abstract matches the results.

Easy to take the wrong way

That finding limitations means the paper is unusable. It means you now know what it can and cannot support, which is the point of reading it.

Try this

Take the paper your argument most depends on and read its results and abstract side by side. Note any difference in confidence.