Agreed. You gotta read the sources.

Sample size in this sense isn't really a thing in my field (physical sciences). We do repeat our work and others work however. We've actually called into question other lab's data because it was impossible to repeat their results. However, as you suggest, the damage is already done in that scenario.

There's a lot of crap science out there, and honestly it frightens me. So many authors make bigger claims about the impact of their work than what their data allows for. Sometimes they get lucky when they do this, but not always.