Hot take: we would all do well to lose the practice of “defensive citation” — citing excessively so that no reviewer can claim you are ignorant of the literature when you fail to cite them.
I am reading a primary research paper, not a review, and it’s got 50 citations in the first two paragraphs. There’s no need for this. I blame Goodhart’s law.
@ct_bergstrom Why? What's the cost? Sure enough the cited stuff must be clearly related to the work, but if it is, I want to have it listed. Helps me explore the context when outside of my field.
