Replication of results

Replication of results is essential for scientific progress. If a scientist makes a claim, and writes it up in the proper format for publication, it may pass peer review, but this does not make it valid. It might get some media play, but it's not going to be added to textbooks on the high school or university level unless other scientists are convinced.

What is most convincing to a scientists is seeing for himself. If it's an experiment which can be performed again, other scientists can satisfy their curiosity by doing the experiment over themselves. If they get the same results, that's a confidence booster. If their results are sufficiently different to shed doubt on the the original scientific paper, then we get a scientific dispute.

• Sometimes mistakes (and sometimes outright frauds) can come from supposedly-reputable institutions and appear in supposedly-reputable journals. Scientific empirical results become firmer when other workers replicate the experiment. Theoretical results become firmer when people repeat the calculation, and/or check for consistency with other theoretical and empirical results. [1]

• ... peer-review is by no means proof against bad science or incorrect findings. It is more of an extended editorial process. The real test of published science comes later, when the broader community attempts to replicate results. [2]