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Film theory has largely overlooked the fact that film and video are founded in an economy of the multiple. In this chapter, I outline a theory of the moving image as a reproducible medium that considers the way an image may be copied repeatedly so as to facilitate circulation across distribution networks. By moving into this domain, one confronts not the questions of indexicality, documentary, and realism that so often get asked in relation to the image’s status as a copy of the profilmic; rather, issues of authority, originality, and authenticity become paramount. This chapter unfolds what is at stake in approaching the moving image in this way and will examine how its reproducibility has been conceived of as both a utopian promise and the site of a dangerous inauthenticity since its emergence in the late nineteenth century.

This chapter reviews and evaluates reports that scientists often cannot repeat, or “reproduce” published work. It begins by defining what “reproducibility” means and how reproducibility applies to various kinds of science. The focus then shifts to the Reproducibility Project: Psychology, which was a systematic effort to repeat published findings in psychology, and which gave rise to many of the present concerns about reproducibility. The chapter critically examines the Reproducibility Project and points out how the nature of science and the complexity of nature can stymie the best attempts at reproducibility. The chapter also reviews the statistical criticisms of science that John Ioannidis and Katherine Button and their colleagues have raised. The hypothesis is a central issue because it is inconsistently defined across various branches of science. The statisticians’ strongest attacks are directed against work that differs from most laboratory experimental science. A weak point in the reasoning behind the Reproducibility Project and the statistical arguments is the assumption that a multi-pronged scientific investigation can be legitimately criticized by close examination of one of its components. Experimental science relies on multiple tests and multiple hypotheses to arrive at its conclusions. Reproducibility is a valid concern for science; it is not a “crisis.”

This chapter makes the case for the scientific hypothesis from two quite different points of view: statistical and cognitive. The consideration of statistical advantages picks up from the discussion of the Reproducibility Crisis in the previous chapter. First, it explores reasoning that shows that hypothesis-based research will, as a general rule, be much more reliable than, for example, open-ended gene searches. It also revives a procedure, Fisher’s Method for Combining Results that, though rarely used nowadays, underscores the strengths of multiple testing of hypotheses. Second, the chapter goes into many cognitive advantages of hypothesis-based research that exist because the human mind is inherently and continually at work trying to understand the world. The hypothesis is a natural way of channeling this drive into science. It is also a powerful organizational tool that serves as a blueprint for investigations and helps organize scientific thinking and communications.