Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by davidktr 1438 days ago
The full quote in question: "Science, since time immemorial, has relied on the systemic replication of any presented result or finding."

This is wrong, plain and simple. It paints a picture of necessary and sufficient conditions for scientific progress which are incorrect.

- The vast majority of "results and findings" is not looked at anybody other than the researchers directly involved. If you have 5 people on a paper, be sure at at best 3 of them have seen actual data, or were even involved in the experiment.

- Where is the systemic replication, exactly? Replication rates vary considerably across fields. And, of course, only selected results are replicated.

- If there was a systemic replication of "any result and finding", how is it possible that there is a replication crisis at all? Should the bad apples not have been found long ago?

If science would, in fact, rely on such a system, doing replications would be a normal part of everyday scientific work. It is not, not by a long shot.

So you can conclude that either science is not happening at all (not sure when it did though), or that the quoted premise is incorrect.