I think someone should mention Harry Collins and Trevor Pinch’s book The Golem here. It’s a collection of episodes from the history of science. The general theme is that in practice, new discoveries do not involve a clear-cut observation followed by theorizing, instead there is a lot of squabbling over whether the researchers involved carried out their experiments correctly, and these kind of feuds can persist for a scientific generation.
My view is that this makes replication attempts all the more important. But it also shows that some resistance and recriminations and mudslinging is probably to be expected—because the human status games of “are you a good enough scientist that we can really trust you” is a very integral part of how humans do science.
I think someone should mention Harry Collins and Trevor Pinch’s book The Golem here. It’s a collection of episodes from the history of science. The general theme is that in practice, new discoveries do not involve a clear-cut observation followed by theorizing, instead there is a lot of squabbling over whether the researchers involved carried out their experiments correctly, and these kind of feuds can persist for a scientific generation.
My view is that this makes replication attempts all the more important. But it also shows that some resistance and recriminations and mudslinging is probably to be expected—because the human status games of “are you a good enough scientist that we can really trust you” is a very integral part of how humans do science.