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Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.

I'm greatly disturbed that no one seems to have tried to replicate the experiment of huge significance since 2013. Or worse people use it as a fact, without it having been replicated.

Science has some real fundamental issues atm.

Wiki points out some issues, but it seems simple to me, it needs to be replicated.

"Several criticisms were reported, including the study's low statistical power as evidence of some irregularity such as bias in reporting results.[91] Due to limits of sample size, there is a probability that an effect will not be demonstrated to within statistical significance even if it exists. The criticism suggested that the probability that all the experiments reported would show positive results if an identical protocol was followed, assuming the claimed effects exist, is merely 0.4%. The authors also did not indicate which mice were siblings, and treated all of the mice as statistically independent.[92] The original researchers pointed out negative results in the paper's appendix that the criticism omitted in its calculations, and undertook to track which mice were siblings in the future.["

> Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence

People say this, but it seems pointlessly dismissive to me. I'll entertain any claim, regardless of evidence. Extraordinary claims are often the most worthy of entertaining.

My brain has no problem keeping track of speculation, provisional theories, and seeming facts. I don't have any trouble storing both "seems plausible" and "has evidence" notions side by side and juggling them accordingly.

That aside, my general assumption about evolution is that, since there's no requirement for adaptations to "make sense" and they have access to all of reality, including everything science has yet to deconstruct, that animals almost certainly rely on adaptations far beyond scientific understanding. So a claim to that effect isn't that extraordinary anyway.

What constitutes an "extraordinary" level in "extraordinary claims" is one the least-defined things in aphorisms related to science. It reminds me of what some call the "stages of change" First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident.

It seems if what is "extraordinarily" unlikely can easily become "true and self-evident" then extraordinary was a more a way of fighting against things opposed for more emotional than evidentiary reasons.

To the dead comment: of course it doesn't make sense. We still don't understand DNA fully. That's why it's interesting!
I don't believe it. I would have to conduct this experiment myself and see the actual reaction with my own eyes to believe it. I cannot imagine that knowledge about a smell is passed down to a descendant. Or have an explanation for the mechanism by which this happens. Why does this happen, how is the information transferred? It makes no sense.
Your ability to recognise faces, you surely realise, was passed down to you genetically? It’s encoded as hardware priors in the structure of your brain. So it’s not too hard to extend that to knowledge of a smell, similarly hardcoded somewhere. I’m not defending the original paper btw, which seems to have some faults.
Faces, sure, but a particular face?
If you ever crowdfund an attempt to replicate it, please let me know!