[coldtea]

It doesn't have to be "arbitrarily many people". Just people other than the original scientist. So colleagues at Apple still qualify.

There are tons of secret research behind any company (and governments), and it's still "science".

(And conversely, lots of published scientific papers are actually not reproducible, but for most of them nobody bothers -- even if other scientists cite them as accurate).

[snowwrestler]

It's just the conclusions that need to be reproducible. In fact, science as a whole works better when researchers devise alternate experiments to test the same conclusion.

For example, say I measure gravitational acceleration on Earth by dropping a feather repeatedly. I get a number and I publish it. If other scientists just repeat my exact experiment, they will get a similar number and my result will be confirmed. Yay science!

But if scientists decide to check my number by dropping a wide variety of other objects, they will illustrate the flaws in my original experiment and everyone will get a clearer picture of gravity.

So it's not about just reproducing an experiment; scientists seek to test and expand upon each others' results.