Very true. Regrettably, janitorial work is extremely hard to publish, as I had to find out. Mostly because reproducing other people's work, or comparing method

Very true. Regrettably, janitorial work is extremely hard to publish, as I had to find out. Mostly because reproducing other people's work, or comparing methods, is bound to find unfavorable conditions where a method does not work as well as published, or error measures that highlight common problematic behavior. At least in my area of research, such findings were unpopular with reviewers, to say the least. Probably not least because the reviewers tended to be the very people whose work was reproduced. Which is sad, because this sort of work is well-suited to get PhD students acquainted with a field, and provides real scientific information.