> You're right that this is the worst case scenario, but each interesting replication or semi-replication, even sloppy replication, or theoretical model erodes

> You're right that this is the worst case scenario, but each interesting replication or semi-replication, even sloppy replication, or theoretical model erodes at that. Not really. The ur-example of the worst-case scenario is cold fusion, and as we were reminded by somebody [1] early on, is that the first replications of the Fleischmann–Pons experiment were actually successful to some degree. Those initial replications were later retracted when it was found that there was experimental error that could observe the same phenomenon, and other replication attempts were reporting outright failure instead of partial success. > Anyways your memory is really short. Don't you remember how when it first came out (not even a week ago) everyone was hollering that it was fake? Your memory is really short. The first thread was 8 days ago [2], over a week ago. I've just been perusing those comments quickly, and there's very few accusations of it being fake. The dominant sentiment is along the lines of "big, if true" or "please let it be true", and there's only a few top-level comments casting any shade on its plausibility. But the threads since the weekend have largely seemed to cast aside even the limited skepticism once opined. [1] I'd love to credit them, but sorry, trying to dig out which comment out of several hundred splayed out across the various early threads was the one I remembered is more work than I can devote at the time. Edit: credit is https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36884183 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36884183, thanks to segfaultbuserr for finding the link. [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36864624 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36864624