Benja: I'd expect to see a lower correlation on the replication, and then possibly a higher correlation than that on a modification with further reproductive opportunity costs to maturity taken into account. Yes, given prior suspicion, we should suspect that a replication would show lower correlation but still high correlation.

It's also worth noting that the study broke down male and female raters and male and female children before adding it all up, and that the correlations for each subcategory were also high (eighties and nineties).

Sideways, it's pointed at a whole 'lotta people, but I should also note that I suspect you were running into an imaginability bias ("I can't see how you would verify that") rather than a search-with-no-papers-found observation.