Progressive vs Treadwater Fields

There are many reasons why grumbling about attempts to replicate are unlikely in the physical or even the biological sciences, but the main reason is that in most other sciences research is cumulative:

Experimental and observational findings that are worth knowing are those on which further experiments and observations can be built, for an ever fuller and deeper causal understanding of the system under study, whether the solar system or the digestive system. If the finding is erroneous, the attempts to build on it collapse. Cumulative replication is built into the trajectory of research itself ? for those findings that are worth knowing.

In contrast, if no one bothers to build anything on it, chances are that a finding was not worth knowing (and so it matters little whether it would replicate or not, if tested again).

Why is it otherwise in many areas of Psychology? Why do the outcomes of so many one-shot, hit-and-run studies keep being reported in textbooks?

Because so much of Psychology is not cumulative explanatory research at all. It is helter-skelter statistical outcomes that manage to do two things: (1) meet a crierion for statistical significance (i.e., a low probability that they occurred by chance) and (2) are amenable to an attention-catching interpretation.

No wonder that their authors grumble when replicators spoil the illusion.

Yes, open access, open commentary and crowd-sourcing are needed in all fields, for many reasons, but for one reason more in hit-and-run fields.