To add a bit here about scientific journal articles.
All published scientific journals offer titles, abstracts and authors of each paper freely. Some journals are "open-access" and provide free access to compelte articles (e.g., PLoS, BMC journals). (Note, however, to publish in these journals, the authors must pay a large fee). Traditionally, scientific journals are published by for-profit publishing companies and they charge an arm and a leg for the articles or a subscription to the journal, but don't charge the authors to publish their papers there. Getting a subscription or access to a single article costs $$. Luckily, the State universities (including UC and CSU) have subscriptions to most or all of the journals in operation, and the libraries are open to the public during normal business hours. Anyone is entitled to walk right into any one of the UC Berkeley, UCSF, or SFSU libraries and sit down at a computer terminal to access journal articles that are published online, or access to look at anything on the shelves of the library. Anyone can photocopy or print out what they look at (for a fee). But, you will not be able to save a .pdf of the article unless you are a "member" of the academic institution that has the subscription. Reposting a scanned photocopy online is definitely a no-no copyright violation. But, using a photocopy to quote sections and cite the article is perfectly acceptable. Citations in this online forum should provide the URL to the journal's page where that abstract is posted.
Now - on to a matter of whether finding something in a scientific paper means it's the truth: It does not. Science is a process just like discussions in this forum are a process. Scientists often draw conclusions from data that later turn out to be wrong upon collection of additional data. One must not read just a single scientific paper in order to make a decision about a particular topic. Rather, it is important to read many (or all) research papers on the topic to evaluate the robustness of whatever scientific theory is in question. Here, one is not a skeptic as much as a critic. Reading scientific research with a critical eye yields insights as to how small variation in methodology used can result in varying data, and thus varying conclusions, across studies that address the same topic. Learning to read the scientific literature is not easy, but if one is to start looking at these articles for best results it's important to do so with the right mindset.
