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- Very interesting comments. I particularly agree with Paul from MI, Benjo and Alexandre Van de Sande, whose comment suggests the obvious: scientists do not spend time replicating experiments without being convinced that they might be able to disprove past results. That is the routine of the true empiricist -- disbelieve and disprove -- as opposed the theoretician, who proceeds using analytical methods. Of course, the majority of scientists are empiricists. As the empiricist's career progress, it becomes increasingly more difficult to produce significantly new knowledge. You have to be continually looking for experimental results that can be debunked. For most, it is not until much later (if ever) that you may get an idea for a test that no one has really done (or published) before. So, scientists build their careers by debunking previous results (their own as well as those of others) and always looking to refine methodology to explain away (refine) effects and isolate cause-effect relationships.
Another view would be that a lot depends on what you think your sponsor wants to or needs to hear. So, at first, a researcher might demonstrate a simplistic version of an effect to get funded so as to be able to study the more complex relationships that underlie or mitigate this type of outcome. Like, what percent of those involved in the Manhattan project were professionally motivated by being involved in a project that produced the most destructive bomb ever made? They were Nuclear Physicists working on advancing the state of knowledge in their field. Would they have considered themselves failures if the A-bomb had never materialized? I don't think so. After all, we did get knowledge like the effect of Flouride on dental health out of the efforts.
