3 ms·

>>If the replication fails, it's even more time-consuming and expensive to convincingly demonstrate the negative result. Said scientist will gain immense fame

• Obi_Juan_Kenobi 10y ago
  I think your's and the parent comment are both right, just addressing different extremes. Sometimes you find evidence that doesn't quite match up with previous work, but if an explanatory framework isn't forthcoming, it can be difficult to say who's results are right, and what they mean. On the other hand, sometimes you come across something blatantly wrong, so you do your follow up experiments to confirm and you're all set. It's only the latter case that will quickly make it into a manuscript. I will say, I've seen some big corrections (like this-allele-was-actually-a-completely-different-mutant bad) that just get buried in the results section of a subsequent publication, and no retraction was ever submitted for the original paper. That was definitely a failure in the field, and likely the result of the status of the authors involved.
• tdaltonc 10y ago
  You only get famous if you produce a new order that replaces the old one. Throwing stones at the old order doesn't actually get you very much unless you provide something better. Especially in psych/bio, a negative finding can almost always be blamed on the experimentalist -- even more so if they are young. It is no great feat to conduct a study so poorly that fail to detect a signal others have reported.