Chabris dismisses the Alter & Oppenheimer study because no "exact" replications have been done that "he has found," but then proceeds to give weight to a simila

Chabris dismisses the Alter & Oppenheimer study because no "exact" replications have been done that "he has found," but then proceeds to give weight to a similar study, which failed to replicate the findings, even though that study itself was not an exact replica, because the test questions were not appropriate for the sample: "In my review, I criticized Gladwell for describing this experiment at length without also mentioning that a replication attempt with a much larger and more representative sample of subjects did not find an advantage for difficult typefaces. One of the original study's authors wrote to me to argue that his effect is robust when the test questions are at an appropriate level of difficulty for the participants in the experiment, and that his effect has in fact been replicated “conceptually” by other researchers. However, I cannot find any successful direct replications—repetitions of the experiment that use the same methods and get the same results—and direct replication is the evidence that I believe is most relevant." I'm not sure who to believe here. Legitimate criticism exists, but for every successful author, there is one who seeks to piggy back on their fame by attacking it, and for every sensational scientific study, there is more to be gained by disproving it than by replicating it.