ABSTRACT
A literature review should be a critical assessment of the literature on a topic. Novice writers often make two common mistakes that lead to noncritical reviews. First, they often take the results of each study to be “facts” that have been proven. As indicated below, all studies should be presumed flawed and, therefore, to offer only degrees of evidence, not “truths” to be accepted noncritically. Second, novice writers often discuss all studies as though they were equal in quality when some studies are methodologically superior to others.
