> And if the author of the second study calls out the author of the first study The "if" there is one big problem. What seems to have happened instead, in som

> And if the author of the second study calls out the author of the first study The "if" there is one big problem. What seems to have happened instead, in some fields, is that studies that would challenge the results of existing ones simply don't get published. This is partly a result of scientists self-censoring ("I must have done something wrong") and partly a result of journals not accepting papers that challenge "established science". But also, again for some fields, the assumption that other scientists build on the existing work may not be true. The worst-case scenario is when someone does a study, the results are widely trumpeted and applied to the real world, no one keeps track of how they actually perform in the real world (which may be difficult to do anyway, in fields like social psychology), and no one bothers doing any more studies in the area because it's "settled science"...