 However this dispute is resolved, questions of trust and authority arise in a particularly pointed way in the sciences, and Hardwig’s dilemma for the physics experiment is also a specific version of a more general phenomenon. A popular conception of science, fed partly by Popper’s falsificationism, is that it is epistemically reliable because the results of experiments and observational studies are checked by independent repetition. In practice, however, only some results are so checked and many are simply accepted on trust. Not only must positive results be accepted on trust, but claims of failure to replicate as well as other critiques must be also. Thus, just as in the non-scientific world information is accepted on trust, so in science, knowledge grows by depending on the testimony of others. What are the implications of accepting this fact for our conceptions of the reliability of scientific knowledge?