[fasterik]

I'm not inside the scientific community so I can't verify the degree to which it's a shameful question. My guess is that it has a lot more to do with simple heuristics than dogmatism. A researcher has finite time and resources. They need to decide what to work on based on the likelihood that they can make progress on certain well-defined problems. We already have a centuries-long track record of making progress by studying things in terms of physical and chemical processes. That doesn't mean this approach can solve every problem, but there's not much else we can do until a new Einstein comes along and proposes an alternative that's compelling enough. I believe there are a lot of young scientists who would be willing to jump on a new paradigm if it was obviously leading to novel insights and breakthroughs, but that hasn't happened. It's not because these ideas are being suppressed, it's because nobody has put them forward in a rigorous and convincing manner.