I used to teach PhD students with zero experience how to do a meta-analysis in a single class. Admittedly it was a three hour class, but by the end of it students were doing meta-analysis all on their own with no problems at all.
Meta-analysis is conceptually easy. It will take you about 2 minutes to follow my simple example found here.
It’s true that not everyone will want to run a full-blown meta-analysis. But learning to think meta-analytically is an essential skill for any researcher engaged in replication research, theoretical development or who is simply trying to draw conclusions from past work.
For more on how to think meta-analytically, check out my book Meta Analysis Made Easy: