michael_nielsen

Question: Can you think of a widely accepted scientific claim that is based on a single study and no replications? [Operationalize "widely accepted" as routinely in the discipline's core knowledge textbooks.] If so, what is the claim and what was the study?

Theoretical physics is often based on zero studies (directly), yet ends up in the discipline's core textbooks. Thousands and thousands of examples. Eg the Higgs Boson and gravity waves and BEC were in textbooks for decades before confirmation.

Good point. I should narrow the question to account for theory-based claims. But, in your examples, would experts agree that there are no studies offering supporting evidence, or that the critical experiments haven't been done yet, or something else?

Something like, say, gravity waves is tough to fit into this narrative. Of course, GR had supporting evidence. And Bell et al's pulsar results provided indirect results (in the 1970s, IIRC, though). But it's really not difficult to imagine a world where LIGO found nothing.

In general these situations are very interesting. Instruments sometimes cost hundreds of millions of dollars. So replication is, in the short term, very difficult.

I wrote a short note about some related ideas here: http://michaelnielsen.org/blog/science-beyond-individual-understanding/ …