[leovailati]

I generally like the idea of rewarding replication studies. Replication/validation could be a required process that runs concurrently to peer review. The researchers who run the experiments to replicate results could rewarded by being added as contributors to the original paper, so they also get the citations. And like you suggest, the paper would then be marked as "validated" or something similar. I wonder if any journals out there are already doing something like this.

There is, of course, the danger of collusion among original authors and validators. Hopefully the fear of having your results rebuked would prevent people from trying to publish bullshit in the first place.

Another problem is logistics. Research labs have their own ideas they want to push forward, so spending time and resources proving or (even worse) disproving some else's idea doesn't sound that great. Also, even if it gives you citations, it probably wouldn't help you with your thesis.

Anyways, it's a tough problem to solve.