I think someone should mention Harry Collins and Trevor Pinch's book The Golem here. It's a collection of episodes from the history of science. The general theme is that in practice, new discoveries do not involve a clear-cut observation followed by theorizing, instead there is a lot of squabbling over whether the researchers involved carried out their experiments correctly, and these kind of feuds can persist for a scientific generation.

My view is that this makes replication attempts all the more important. But it also shows that some resistance and recriminations and mudslinging is probably to be expected---because the human status games of "are you a good enough scientist that we can really trust you" is a very integral part of how humans do science.