alt Hacker NewsAnyone here still doing verification or reproduction work? Feels like it’s becoming rare, but I find it super valuable.
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pcrh • last Wednesday at 4:44 PM
Verification work is more common than often supposed.
However, it rarely takes the form of explicit replication of the published findings. More commonly, the published work makes a claim, and such a claim leads to further hypotheses (predictions), which others may attempt to demonstrate/veriify.
During this second demonstration/study, the claims of the first study are verified.
Reproduction of the work is usual but it's unpublished.
Let's suppose you read a paper that does "X with Y", but you are interested in "Z", so the brilliant idea is to do "Z with Y" and publish the new combination, and citing it.
Sometimes you cross your fingers and just try "Z with Y", but if the initial attempt fails or you are too cautious you try "X with Y" to ensure you understand the details of the original paper.
If the reproduction of "X with Y" is a success, you now try "Z with Y" and if it works you publish it.
If the reproduction of "X with Y" is a failure, you may email the authors of just drop the original paper in the recycle bin. Publishing a failure of a reproduction is too difficult. This is a bad incentive, but it's also too easy to make horrible mistakes and fail.