Science is, as scientists like to say, “self-correcting,” meaning that errors in preliminary studies are, ideally, revealed by subsequent studies. One of the primary principles of the scientific method is that the results of a study must be reproducible. Until the results of a small study are duplicated by a larger study, they are little more than a suggestion for further research. Most studies are not incredibly meaningful on their own, but gain or lose meaning from the work that has been done around them.
