What he is saying is that there are no kudo's for publishing work that just confirms something. Research grants are given for new work not for doing confirming

What he is saying is that there are no kudo's for publishing work that just confirms something. Research grants are given for new work not for doing confirming followup work. This has become a problem in recent decades and has led to certain systemic problems that have been discussed in various places in recent months. If you say something like "I am submitting this grant request to replicate the experiments of X who have published results Y so that we can confirm X's results" then your grant application will most likely be refused.