For a scientific finding to be worth taking seriously, it can’t be something that occurred because of random chance, or a glitch in the equipment, or because the scientist was cheating or dissembling. It has to have really happened. And if it did, then in principle I should be able to go out and find broadly the same results as yours. In many ways, that’s the essence of science, and something that sets it apart from other ways of knowing about the world: if it won’t replicate, then it’s hard to describe what you’ve done as scientific at all.
