reviewing a review: Referencing I have been reading a paper and in the Background section the author said something like:

Recent studies suggest that... 

and then gave a citation. 

I went to that references section, took the name of the other paper and downloaded it.

what was a surprise for me is that this paper also in the literature review section refer to the same studies.

I thought that the first paper refer to this second paper. So, is this allowed on literature review without considering secondary citation?
I don't think there's anything too unseemly going on here, unless the cited paper that also lists the other papers does not actually produce the results that follow "Recent studies show." In that case, there's a problem.

Otherwise, however, you do have to give some deference to the fact that there are only so many papers out there on a given topic.