The original article was published in Science, so this isn't a "random piece". It's a specific refutation of something they saw fit to publish.
> “We still believe that there is value in exploring how physiological reactions and conscious experience shape political attitudes and behavior, but after further consideration, we have concluded that any such relationships are more complicated than we (and the researchers on the Science paper) presumed.“
That sounds more like a clarification or a letter to the editor. I don’t disagree that nuance is important, but I assume Nature believes they can get more nuance out of visiting new studies than reinterpreting old ones.
Using the time reversal heuristic, if we flip the order, so the replication came before the original, how would you feel about Science publishing a paper with a positive result, when multiple studies--with larger samples and the same materials--had not obtained the result?
If you think the original should still be published in Science in that case, why? Since the original is published and highly visible, it's dangerous that Science won't correct the highly publicized, unlikely-true result.
That happens all the time. Papers with null results tend to either sit in drawers unpublished, or never get written at all. Nobody knows about the multiple studies because nobody will publish them.
Some number of people (including eg. Roca) say that this is a problem - a "replication crisis" if you will.
Those people say that perhaps papers with null results should be published. Perhaps -they say- publication of null results could be (one possible) (part of) the solution.
Your reply sounded like you don't completely agree? Is that true, or did Roca read you wrong? Could you clarify?