30+ labs fail to replicate Marcus et al's 1999 Science paper on infants vs RNNs, built on just 16 babies
tallinzen · x · 2026-09-29
A large ManyBabies consortium replication across 30+ labs failed to reproduce Marcus et al (1999), the 2,000-citation Science paper arguing infants can learn grammar rules while RNNs cannot — a study based on just 16 infants. The replication, led by Andreea Geambaşu, Melanie Soderstrom, and Claartje Levelt, is open access with public data and code. The author notes journals should no longer accept 16-subject studies, and the result weakens a famous empirical pillar of the symbolic-vs-connectionist debate.
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