Quoting the article again: "It is up to authors to interpret the effect size in their study, and to show the mechanism through which an effect that is impossibl

Quoting the article again: "It is up to authors to interpret the effect size in their study, and to show the mechanism through which an effect that is impossibly large, becomes plausible. Without such an explanation, the finding should simply be dismissed." Rutherford was able to come up with such a mechanism in his work with Niels Bohr. Atomic theory was quite new when Rutherford made his discovery: in a sense this was low-hanging fruit. The article's point is that this effect size is so big that if it was real, any half-decent lawyer would aready know about it. Without an explanation for why everyone somehow missed this point, the claim is pretty much invalid. I think the right analogy is if someone comes up with evidence for a speed of light that does not agree with the standard measurement. If the claim is to be taken seriously, not only do they have to be rigorous in their experiment - they also need to explain why all other measurements were incorrect. This stuff happens all the time in science. Experiments are sloppy, and results are difficult to replicate. The go-to reaction should be to throw out a result, unless it can be replicated time and time again. Kuhn's description of a paradigm shift included room for 'problems' that can't be explained with the confines of normal science. You only start throwing things out when the evidence against you becomes unassailable.