The problem is bigger. It even blocks research!

In my own experience I was unable to publish a few works because I was unable to outperform a "competitor" (technically we're all on the same side, right?). So I dig more and more into their work and really try to replicate their work. I can't! Emailing the authors I get no further and only more questions. I submit the papers anyways, adding a section about replication efforts. You guessed it, rejected. With explicit comments from reviewers about lack of impact due to "competitor's" results.

Is an experience I've found a lot of colleagues share. And I don't understand it. Every failed replication should teach us something new. Something about the bounds of where a method works.

It's odd. In our strive for novelty we sure do turn down a lot of novel results. In our strive to reduce redundancy we sure do create a lot of redundancy.