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by MacsHeadroom 1866 days ago
It's not that older studies tended to be more accurate. It's that peers worked together in seclusion via lots of back-and-forth letters and collaboration over years, only "publishing" when they and their peer group were sure they had something worth sharing with the wider community.

This is how science was done up until some time in the 1970s. This is how real groundbreaking science is still done. The publishing prestige economy is of little actual value.