I've had many people suggest just reading the figures, but I've found that most scientists hide their sins in the methods section, and the figures cannot be properly interpreted without careful inspection of the methods (which often demonstrates the authors didn't really do a good job).
Also, I've noticed that a very large range of papers with faked image data in figures has gone unnoticed by most readers. People look at the figures hoping to see what they want to see and aren't critical enough about the process used to generate them (when I wrote my phd thesis, all figures were programmatically generated by version-controlled code on well-managed data.
I agree with this. The results and discussion are usually the least interesting parts and figures are usually meaningless without seeing how the data used to generate those figures were collected.
The methodology tells you exactly what the people who wrote the paper did. It's where you can see whether they used a sample size of 10 vs 1000, what methods they used to sample their data, the accuracy levels they used in analyzing their data, it's also how a study may be replicated.
Without reading the methods, you can't be sure about any other thing in the paper.
That's the problem i see with a lot of news reporting on science papers. They use the gp's method of reading. Abstract, images and maybe results if they're really trying.
That's how you end up with a lot of sensationalist, contradictory science headlines.
Also, I've noticed that a very large range of papers with faked image data in figures has gone unnoticed by most readers. People look at the figures hoping to see what they want to see and aren't critical enough about the process used to generate them (when I wrote my phd thesis, all figures were programmatically generated by version-controlled code on well-managed data.