> But even something that is rare and relies on observation, like gravitational waves, we have already been able to identify more than one occurrence. But who

> But even something that is rare and relies on observation, like gravitational waves, we have already been able to identify more than one occurrence. But who didn't believe the original result? And does the same experiment observing multiple occurences really count as 'reproducability'? We've only had ONE observed local group supernova within the past several hundred years (and that was within our lifetime, thankfully with several relevant detectors up and running). Should we ignore any result or conclusions from this instance? No - if the data from the next supernova disagrees or reshapes the field - and it probably will, given the huge amounts of resources dedicated to studying it (see e.g. http://snews.bnl.gov/ http://snews.bnl.gov/), this will just be evidence of scientific progress - reshaping your position based on experimental data. Again, I think there is a certain amount of crosstalk with people who say that the "Entire community of scientists" has a problem, whilst actually meaning specific fields. Perhaps an ironic imprecision.