Lateral reading is a fast way to scan texts, its very effective to analyze the main idea of paragraphs, through detection of core concepts/words scattered in the text. Although it could miss some details, and it's caveats are that its a technique to get broad ideas, it is not suitable to detailed understanding of the topic. The concepts detected could help to inform about the knowledge of the author, wether is a professional with experience or not. Accuracy could be informed with consistency through the text, if the scan brings contradictory terms it could inform that the text has major flaws in its coherence.