rewt already gave you a suggestion on the other thread you created.

:-D

...and in fairness I get your point as well.

You are scraping the barrel here with this example :-) Knowledge of the statistical method and interpretation of the result is the crucial thing in your example. How the software efficiently makes the calculations for specific hardware platforms is barely relevant.

Do you have any good examples where knowledge contained within a paper is crucial to understanding the science?

Arsenic is natural.
As are the toxins created by many snakes and spiders and several plants and mushrooms.
I am not sure what your point is.

Agree with Thesisisfun. What you have published on that website is not a clinical trial.

I am not talking about software packages.

Why on earth are you feeling shame?
And you should not be worrying about how your supervisor feels either.
This PhD is yours and yours alone and you are going to make mistakes.
Your supervisor's feelings are irrelevant.

You are joking right? It's a very good joke.

starryeyed has explained the problem above. Your approach risks ending in the precise problem described in the news article above. The credibility of any researchers involved in this sloppiness has been destroyed with a risk of retracted papers and the end of their career.
Of course there is "accepted wisdom" but you should not reference the original papers if you can't verify them for yourself.
I can show you how I get around this via an example.
The whole of Chemistry is based on the Born-Oppenheimer approach. The original paper for this is in Geman and I cannot read German. If I want to work on approaches for which the Born Oppenheimer approximation breaks down and is no longer valid then I have a problem in terms of referencing. I have two solutions. The most obvious one is to take advantage of an English translation of the original paper. I then reference the translation paper. That paper would subsequently reference the original and the path is complete without me having to reference a paper i cannot read. The second approach involves referencing a secondary source such as a book which describes the information I want. Again the book should be referencing the original paper as per their responsibilities to science.
Thee may be other approaches but referencing literature you have not read is misconduct at best and at worst it means the papers of those who engage in it cannot be trusted as legitimate research resources becaue the authors cannot know for certain if what they are talking about is valid other than through hearsay. That might be OK for the general public in their daily lives but as professional researchers it is our job to be pedantic on things like this. If we dont do it, nobody else will do it.

And if you can't get hold of it then you can't be absolutely certain what it contains and therefore can't ethically reference it.
As a researcher you are responsible for everything you write. Just like an athlete is responsible for everything they put in their body. This seems a very easy black and white case here. I don't see any scope for shades of grey.

Yes maybe but you at least have to open the book and peer inside to know that surely?

It's a shame. You are backing down over a very trivial thing which you say makes you uncomfortable. You are going to face much more difficult ethical issues than this. Are you likely to stand up for yourself if you can't even deal with this trivial issue?
Why won't your supervisor simply let you read the book to allow you to form your own opinion?

It's your PhD and your choice how to handle this problem but in my opinion you are making a mistake not challenging this and you are creating a potential landmine for your viva.

Doing a PhD for financial reasons is a terrible idea.

You earn big money with specific industrial experience in something which companies require but can't easily source. You are already in industry. Why would you come out? Surely it would be easier to identify a better job and train yourself for it in your spare time?

What kind of income are you after anyway?

It could be that you know you genuinely aren't good enough to be a good researcher (the vast majority of people fall into this category) or it could be imposter syndrome. If it helps, it's worth pointing out how few researchers genuinely are doing worthwhile research. Have a look around you at the work of others. How many are truly changing the lives of anyone else or doing vitally important work? If you find more than a handful you are probably not looking hard enough.
You will know if others see value in your research when you start applying for postdocs or funding. You might want to consider reserving your own personal judgement until then. At least that approach might buy you some time.

I would tell the other PhD students that if they don't like the way things are organised then they should either get off their backsides and volunteer to help out or keep their opinions to themselves. I'm quite surprised that this type of organisation is being left to a PhD student. Staff or postdocs should be getting paid to do this job. Did you request this responsibility or was it forced on you?
I don't pander to people who whine. You would never get genuine and meaningful friendships from these types of people anyway.

You are not really giving us much to work with here.
Can you give us more information about what you want to do after your degree?