[jballanc]

Without having read in-depth either original paper, it seems like the issue here is much simpler than reproduction (though reproduction is the gold standard as is totally under-appreciated these days).

Rather, it seems the authors made a much simpler mistake: hypotheses can only be refuted by evidence, not confirmed. So, in this case, if the hypothesis is "judges act more harshly when hungry", what they should have been doing is looking for evidence disproving that statement. Instead, they seem to have presented a correlation and a suggestion, which is not the same thing as a scientific finding.