&gt; Farmed out the replication of every result to undergrads would, one be a practical&#x2F;logistical nightmare, and two lead to less reliability in what a degree means.<p>Actually I think farming out replication to undergrads would be an excellent approach. Your final year undergrad project should be to choose an under-replicated study and repeat it, publishing your findings. Each individual study might be less reliable if done by an undergrad than done by a seasoned researcher, but if each study is repeated by say 5 undergrads and 2+ of them fail to replicate the results, that would be enough to indicate that the study warrants further attention.<p>&gt; One student could spend their time working on a important result gaining tons of insight and expertise while another could be stuck replicating a task that turned out to be worthless bullshit and have very little to show for it.<p>The whole point of science is that we don&#x27;t know what will turn out to be an important result and what will turn out to be worthless bullshit. No study is worth a damn unless it&#x27;s been replicated but everyone is too busy trying to land-grab the next little piece of unexplored territory to actually validate anything that comes before.<p>If nothing else, we need to regain the perception that a negative result is just as important as a positive result - to paraphrase Edison, discovering 100 things that don&#x27;t work is just as important as discovering one thing that does.