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Kinranyyesterday at 6:21 PM2 repliesview on HN

Publishing a replication could be a prerequisite to getting the degree

The question is, how can universities coordinate to add this requirement and gain status from it


Replies

bonoboTPyesterday at 9:19 PM

Prerequisite required by who, and why is that entity motivated to design such a requirement? Universities also want more novel breakthrough papers to boast about and to outshine other universities in the rankings. And if one is honest, other researchers also get more excited about new ideas than a failed replication that may for a thousand different reasons and the original authors will argue you did something wrong, or evaluated in an unfair way, and generally publicly accusing other researchers of doing bad work won't help your career much. It's a small world, you'd be making enemies with people who will sit on your funding evaluation committees, hiring committees and it just generally leads to drama. Also papers are superseded so fast that people don't even care that a no longer state of the art paper may have been wrong. There are 5 newer ones that perform better and nobody uses the old one. I'm just stating how things actually are, I don't say that this is good, but when you say something "should" happen, think about who exactly is motivated to drive such a change.

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ihaveajobyesterday at 6:39 PM

I think Arxiv and similar could contribute positively by listing replications/falsifications, with credit to the validating authors. That would be enough of an incentive for aspiring researchers to start making a dent.