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All papers should start with a dictionary? No clearly not, so there's always going to be some assumed knowledge - words change their meaning and have different meaning to different people so we're already on to a loser just with the medium we're using.

So, the possibility of things like, say, a researcher not mentioning something that is standard practice in their lab that later is found to be a crucial part of the setup for an experiment seems high. But just like you don't want to provide a dictionary of standard terms with a paper you don't want to provide a list of the chemicals used to mop the floor, or a list of the lumen and colour temperature ratings of lights in the fume cupboards, or ...

IMO if a paper is not reproducible then yes it should be published but also the original team producing the paper should be challenged to reproduce the results. It's not a fight, we're all on the same team - work with them and try to find the reason for the lack of reproducibility.



> So, the possibility of things like, say, a researcher not mentioning something that is standard practice in their lab

I'd suggest a different formulation: "standard practice in their field"

Standard practice in general cooking? That's ok. Standard practice in my kitchen? That's a problem.

The research is IMO like a meal recipe a knowledgable chef should be able to reproduce.

Though it is understandable why one would forget to mention something. Especially if they thought it was general practice to do something their way.




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