Comment by whatever1

In fact I think this should be standard of the PhD curriculum.

In the first year you are clueless anyway, what a better use of your time than replicating some established result, and then publish your findings. In the experimental world the author will often skip details that are crucial to the success, just because it has become second nature to them. A replication study will reveal these, aka you know you need really sterile room to make this work, or you need to set-up this way your linux distribution.