  Replication of scientific experiments is critical to the advance of science.
Unfortunately, the discipline of Computer Science has never treated replication
seriously, even though computers are very good at doing the same thing over and
over again. Not only are experiments rarely replicated, they are rarely even
replicable in a meaningful way. Scientists are being encouraged to make their
source code available, but this is only a small step. Even in the happy event
that source code can be built and run successfully, running code is a long way
away from being able to replicate the experiment that code was used for. I
propose that the discipline of Computer Science must embrace replication of
experiments as standard practice. I propose that the only credible technique to
make experiments truly replicable is to provide copies of virtual machines in
which the experiments are validated to run. I propose that tools and
repositories should be made available to make this happen. I propose to be one
of those who makes it happen.
