Replication, then, has long been a key part of how science is supposed to work – and incidentally, it’s another of its social aspects, with results only being taken seriously after they’ve been corroborated by multiple observers. But somewhere along the way, between Boyle and modern academia, a great many scientists forgot about the importance of replication. In the collision of our Mertonian ideals with the realities of the scientific publication system – not to mention the realities of human nature – the ideals have proven the more fragile, leaving us with a scientific literature full of
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