[derbOac]

The first step is to think of a result, effect, or phenomenon, not in terms of a paper, but a series of papers or literature.

I almost never give weight to a single empirical paper. I look at them as "hypotheses with data".

If the paper has multiple lines of converging evidence, across multiple samples and methods, it's better.

Replication is better still, and still better with preregistration of some sort.

Really the gold standard to me is meta analysis of multiple studies, trying to account for publication bias. RCTs, large samples, preregistration, multiple labs, skeptics, are all better.

There are degrees of legitimacy, and no silver bullet.