9 ms·

why is it slower to discredit than to reproduce?

• Remnant44 3y ago
  Someone claims that a human can run a 5 minute mile. To prove it true, you just need to show a human who can run that fast. To provide it fast, you have to accumulate incontrovertible evidence that it's simply beyond us...
  • Toutouxc 3y ago
    For those firing up Google: The mile run record has been sitting at 3:43 for over two decades now.
• roywiggins 3y ago
  If I can replicate a result, that's fairly straightforward: I replicated it! If I can't, that doesn't mean the result was necessarily wrong; maybe I just messed up, or got unlucky and the result only happens 20% of the time. You might need several independent failed replications to start to be confident that the original result was definitely wrong. It's like saying: there's a buried treasure in this acre. If I find it on my first pass through with a metal detector, job done. If I don't find it on my first pass, I'll probably need to make several more passes, maybe bring in fancier equipment and so on, before I could be pretty confident that it's not there.