Can you give an example of something that isn't reproducible but was still true?
He excluded values to reduce his error (seems like), but that doesn't make the experiment non-reproducible. You can do the same experiment today and get an approximate value for e.
Will you get the exact same results as Millikan? Of course not. But that's not what reproducible means.
Reproducible means that if you follow the method outlined by Millikan, you should get an approximate value for e. This is indeed the case, so the experiment is reproducible.
A non-reproducible experiment would be one where you follow Millikan's method but get something that is nowhere close to being a value for e.
ETA: I encourage the interested to read https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/scientific-reproducibilit... which delves into these semantic issues.
Not every experiment needs to be reproducible in exactly the same way, just like not every study needs to be double-blind. You need to interrogate the reason the experiment exists in the first place.
I guess another way of saying it is this: even though Millikan's actual final result is not reproducible because he fudged his numbers, the scientific method employed in the experiment is valid, which is really all you need in the case of that experiment.
The problem with medicine / psychology / other less "hard" research is that in many instances it doesn't matter if the method is reproducible if the results are not. If the goal is to show that eating pancakes cause depression the result is actually all that matters.
Thanks for the link, I will give it a read.
This link clearly talks about reproducible results, not reproducible data.
Wherever there is some degree of randomness, we would not expect to get the same data, but we would expect to draw the same conclusion.
See also: the Mendelian paradox - it is sometimes argued that Gregor Mendel's results were too perfect, and yet he is honoured as the father of genetics.
To me it seems you're conflating reproducibility with insight. Of course insight is also key, and it may be useful even if it's wrong, as long as it causes others to recursively have new insights and create hypotheses and do experiments that eventually turn out to be true.
Of course there is an epistemological distinction here between a thing that cannot be reproduced by its nature vs. one that cannot be reproduced by societal norms.