[psyklic]

I'm of the opposite view - publish only if you can prove it. If you reward half results, the field will be deluged with half truths. If someone publishes a hypothesis you're working on with only a half proof (and stands to gain the future credit), then there is little incentive to continue doing the work to prove it.

This was actually a major issue one of my PhD advisors had, since it led to poor foundations for the field with little incentive to ensure their validity.

[rdedev]

We need something in between. The paper author may not know why something is happening but has showed that it is statistically significant. Maybe he just does not have the context or background but someone else along the way. Of course the assumption is that people would do replication studies but no one is incentivized to do them so better to be on the safer side