logoalt Hacker News

derektanktoday at 12:06 AM4 repliesview on HN

>Replicating a paper is just as valuable scientifically as publishing it, but how many careers advance through replication?

I don’t think this is true, especially for novel or unexpected results. I suppose it depends on what you mean by scientifically, and there is a debate in the philosophy of science about what the value of research even is, but a successful replication does not result in substantial updates to one’s beliefs in the way new research does. And if the goal of science is to change our beliefs and bring them closer to what is “real”, successful replications can’t be as valuable as the initial research almost by definition.


Replies

Retrictoday at 1:05 AM

From a pure statistical perspective the first scientific paper shouldn’t update your beliefs as much as the independent replication study.

People don’t behave this way, but a high percentage of all papers have known flaws and that goes up even higher when you consider unknown flaws. Replication doesn’t own its own solve the underlying issue, but independent replication removes a huge range of potential issues on top of providing more information.

show 1 reply
pixl97today at 3:06 AM

Hello.

You have created a fraud machine. Why? With no answer checking then why not make up the most fraudulent crap you can get away with?

Examples: A huge portion of recent non-reproducable science papers.

---

Your thinking, along with everybody that's doing this rat race is causing the pumping out of papers with questionable data, but very little to ensure we are actually making correct science.

lanstintoday at 4:53 AM

It is true for mathematics certainly. I would guess it is less true for science per se.

marcus_holmestoday at 2:07 AM

I think successful replications are as valuable as the original research because they're not unsuccessful replications