| It sounds like what you're suggesting would be functionally equivalent to PI-led replications, which I would agree is a good idea. There are still some practical problems though. 1. Studies can be much more expensive than most people think. In my field, a moderately sized study can easily cost $100,000+ if you're only accounting for up front cost (e.g. use of equipment, compensating participants). Someone would have to foot the costs of this. 2. Studies can be incredibly labor-intensive. PI's can get away with running studies that require thousands of man-hours because they have a captive market of PHD students, Post-docs, and research assistants all willing to work for low wages or for free. PHD students usually don't have the same amount of man-power. 3. For obvious reasons, studies that require high cost, high man-power work tend to get replicated naturally less. In other words, the least practical studies to replicate happen to also be the most necessary to replicate. A couple of things I would dispute: > it seems unlikely that replication studies would be devalued merely because they're done by students I think academics value work in a particularly skewed way. There is "grant work" and there is "grunt work". Grant work is anything that actively contributes to getting grants for one's institution. Grunt work is everything else. PHD's can do grunt work, but that doesn't mean it will be valued on the job market. For example, software development is actively sought after in (biology) grad students, because it's a very useful skill. However, I've also seen it count against applications as professors because it shows they spent too much time on "grunt work". Software development skills don't win grants. > Few students want to stay in academia In some fields there aren't any options except to stay in academia or academia adjacent fields. |