4 ms·

Of course I'm not speaking about being unable to reproduce an experiment because you don't have the lab or tools available. But if you can't reproduce with the

• Pyramus 5y ago
  > because you don't have the lab or tools available. I agree, that's trivial. What's not so trivial: Where does the "experiment" start and where do the "conditions" end? In theory the scientific method is easy, in practice (i.e. state of the art research) you are studying highly complicated phenomena, that are, per definition, not well understood. Often you don't know the mechanism of action, let alone the factors that influence it. I don't blame you - if you haven't done scientific research, it is very difficult to appreciate. So again, from the failure to replicate a result it does not follow that the result is wrong, or that "it's not science". That's a misunderstanding of the replication crisis.
  • jmnicolas 5y ago
    You're right, I'm not a scientist. I'll give it to you that researching in a scientific way is science, but if it's not reproducible then what you publish shouldn't be established as "truth" but as a hypothesis that needs further research. What bothers me is that some people are very dogmatic about things that are published and most of the time those people aren't scientists either.