On a complete tangent to the subject of this post, while a proper citations list can make a presentation seem more authoritative (in addition to the obvious function of making it easier to follow up on the sources,) I can’t help feeling a bit.… suspicious? When the reference list is longer than the content of the article.
One solution would be to read the references themselves. The reason there are lots of references is because I make an absurdly high number of claims in a very short space, and I want to back them up.
Also note that to someone (like me) who spends most of his reading time on academic articles that are always followed by at least a dozen references, the above list of references looks normal while their absence might look suspicious (when discussing something like neuroscience, anyway).
On a complete tangent to the subject of this post, while a proper citations list can make a presentation seem more authoritative (in addition to the obvious function of making it easier to follow up on the sources,) I can’t help feeling a bit.… suspicious? When the reference list is longer than the content of the article.
One solution would be to read the references themselves. The reason there are lots of references is because I make an absurdly high number of claims in a very short space, and I want to back them up.
Also note that to someone (like me) who spends most of his reading time on academic articles that are always followed by at least a dozen references, the above list of references looks normal while their absence might look suspicious (when discussing something like neuroscience, anyway).