When you are working with statistical trends, that can be true. But it is perfectly legitimate to highlight a single study with a very clear finding which is difficult to dispute—e.g. the existence of a certain kind of neuron. Moreover, the study we both cited was not a primary study, but was a review of sorts, from the world’s leading expert in this area—in turn, he cited multiple studies to develop his arguments. The systematic review you mention is, at the very least, outdated, and doesn’t really give any kind of convincing response to the arguments laid out in Derbyshire’s paper.
Put another way, I would take one well-argued paper over a million poorly argued papers. If a paper is well argued and cites relevant and convincing arguments/data, it really doesn’t matter if there are other papers which say the same thing or not. Unless another paper actually responds to those arguments and shows why they are bad—the conclusions remain perfectly valid. In short, I do not think there is any such general principle in science as ‘it is bad practice to cite a single study’ - that really depends on one’s purposes and one’s conclusions.
When you are working with statistical trends, that can be true. But it is perfectly legitimate to highlight a single study with a very clear finding which is difficult to dispute—e.g. the existence of a certain kind of neuron. Moreover, the study we both cited was not a primary study, but was a review of sorts, from the world’s leading expert in this area—in turn, he cited multiple studies to develop his arguments. The systematic review you mention is, at the very least, outdated, and doesn’t really give any kind of convincing response to the arguments laid out in Derbyshire’s paper.
Put another way, I would take one well-argued paper over a million poorly argued papers. If a paper is well argued and cites relevant and convincing arguments/data, it really doesn’t matter if there are other papers which say the same thing or not. Unless another paper actually responds to those arguments and shows why they are bad—the conclusions remain perfectly valid. In short, I do not think there is any such general principle in science as ‘it is bad practice to cite a single study’ - that really depends on one’s purposes and one’s conclusions.