4 ms·

I've been getting the impression that many areas of physics have been getting "softer", but have no direct experience. Even Feynman mentioned that physicists we

by nonbel 8y ago

I've been getting the impression that many areas of physics have been getting "softer", but have no direct experience. Even Feynman mentioned that physicists were discouraging replication way back in the "cargo cult science" talk.

BeetleB 8y ago
>Even Feynman mentioned that physicists were discouraging replication way back in the "cargo cult science" talk. If replication is the benchmark, almost no one does it (physicist or otherwise). In all my time in academia, I didn't find a single person attempting to replicate anything. You don't get funding, tenure or papers from it. I was referring to everything else in your comment.
- nonbel 8y ago
  I've seen a couple direct replications in biomed, NIH even specifically funded some a few years back under the “Facilities of Research-Spinal Cord Injury” project. AFAIK, pretty much nothing replicated: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3246348/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3246348/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18234196 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18234196 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2643041/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2643041/ http://europepmc.org/abstract/med/21195070 http://europepmc.org/abstract/med/21195070 But yes it is extremely rare. It is very frustrating because it is hard to come up with a precise model when you only half-trust the data to begin with, and when the replications are (rarely) run it appears that half-trusting the reported results is optimistic...