Does the citation actually support that quit-smoking claim?

01

First make sure you have the cited object

Start with one sentence, not the whole article. Keep its wording visible while following the nearby reference. Match the title, author, year and DOI or other identifier against the opened record; a link to the same subject is not necessarily a link to the cited study.

If a reference leads to a review, find the passage in that review first. A list of papers buried in its bibliography does not automatically support the public sentence. If the sentence attributes a result to a particular trial, follow the review's relevant reference to that trial instead of guessing which study the writer meant.

02

Why finding a reference is only the start

ICMJE requires citations to support their associated statements. That is a requirement about the connection between the sentence and the source, not just a correctly formatted bibliography.

[1]

03

Work through a plausible claim

The following exercise is entirely invented for this page; it describes no real study or service. Imagine a public article says: ‘This support helps people quit for the long term.’ Its reference opens to an imagined report about adult volunteers at one community venue.

The invented excerpt says: ‘Arrangement A offered weekly group meetings plus messages. Arrangement B provided an information leaflet. At week four, respondents in A reported a lower average craving score than respondents in B.’ The excerpt gives no long-term smoking outcome, allocation method, handling of nonrespondents or uncertainty estimate.

Now reread ‘quit for the long term’. The reported measure is craving, not whether people remained smoke-free. Four weeks is not a long-term follow-up. The comparison concerns respondents under two particular arrangements, not everybody offered support. Even the apparently modest word ‘helps’ adds a causal interpretation that this excerpt alone cannot establish.

A faithful, narrower sentence would be: ‘In this invented example, respondents receiving meetings plus messages reported a lower average craving score at four weeks than respondents given a leaflet.’ This reports the comparison without claiming that the arrangement caused the difference. The public long-term quitting claim is not supported by the supplied excerpt; that does not prove that the support cannot work.

04

Find the result, not a sentence discussing its possibilities

NCCIH distinguishes the abstract's brief summary from the fuller Methods, Results and Discussion sections. Those roles help you choose where to look next.

[2]

05

Leave missing evidence missing

For the exercise, the next useful search is for a smoking-status outcome at a specified later time, and its actual comparison—not another paragraph saying the support has promise. Check the outcome definition and whether it refers to everyone enrolled or only those who answered. A future-research suggestion in Discussion is not a measured long-term result.

With a real paper, use the publisher's page, a legitimate open manuscript or a library copy when available. If only the abstract is accessible and it does not report the needed outcome, say ‘I could not verify the long-term claim from the accessible text’. Do not write ‘the paper contains no such result’ unless you have checked the relevant material. Ask the article's editor for the exact section or table supporting the sentence; you need that pointer, not another pile of references.

06

Keep the source trail and the personal decision separate

MedlinePlus asks readers to look for sources and content dates and to discuss health decisions with a health professional. A traceable citation helps you inspect a claim; it does not settle its relevance to your own care.

[3]

07

What to keep in mind

• A citation can be authentic while the sentence stretches its result.
• Craving scores and sustained smoke-free status are different outcomes.
• A narrower rewrite is often more useful than a blanket true/false label.

08

Common questions