question with citations in publication

[yoyohomieg5432]

---

Members do not see this ad.

Slightly random question but I need help with a publication I'm writing.. I'll just ask in an example:

"The incidence of lung cancer increases 10x in smokers compared to non-smokers" Say I was writing this and found this in an article written in 2016. However, the 2016 article used this similar statistic but cited articles back in like 2006-2010 that originally found this out.

If I want to use this stat in my paper, can is it sufficient for me to cite the 2016 paper that said it? Or do I have to go back through the several citations that the 2016 paper referenced and in my paper cite the original ones back in 2006, 2010 etc and NOT just the 2016 paper?

Thanks~!

 

[MSTP18]

You need to cite the original source that developed the statistic.

Which means it depends on how that sentence was created. Did the 2016 paper synthesize data from all those other papers to create that statement? If so, cite the 2016 paper. If you can go into the older paper and find that exact conclusion contained entirely within the previous publication, cite the older one.

It's also worth checking the older papers because maybe that statement isn't a correct interpretation of the data presented in the original paper, and the further you get from the original the worse it could be. One chapter of my dissertation pretty much exists because people kept making a claim about the results of a paper from the 1980s (which was now like 7 degrees of citations removed from current papers) and it turns out that the 1980s paper doesn't actually support the claim everyone had been making for the last 20 years because no one was actually looking at the original paper anymore and clearly just citing everyone else's interpretation of it.