[hnfong]

This.

I'll add that all systems are self-correcting given sufficiently long timescale. (Or they die out and we're none the wiser due to survival bias)

Science isn't any special in this regard. Even the Catholic Church was self correcting (it doesn't do Inquisitions or sell indulgences any more, does it?). As was Nazi Germany (WWII fixed that, hurray for... whatever that was).

To be honest the real "self-correcting" mechanism is some kind of Darwinian survival system where you have to ensure the wrong things don't perpetuate. Government funding really doesn't help with that unless the mechanism deciding which projects/people to fund have a really good model of the real world (i.e. "truth").