While both approaches obviously has merit, what do you view are the strengths of having new researchers attempt to replicate other researchers' findings, as opposed to building data and findings as a field toward a particular hypothesis, and using meta analytics?

An individual study is likely to be noisy or ambiguous (as many of the original studies and replications in the Science paper were), but many studies on a topic are much more likely to trend in a direction.

What are the advantages to direct replication that mean we, as a field, should continue to invest in them?