[ranger207]

> Next week they'll publish another paper about how they were wrong.

Isn't that what's they're supposed to do? "Hey we found this thing, here's how we did it." Next week: "Yeah I checked your data and got different results, let's figure out what's different." A few months/years later: "We've figured out where the problems were and now have a better understanding of this."

[awesome_dude]

Yeah - people forget that the true advantage science has over other methodologies is that it accepts that what is believed today could be proved wrong tomorrow by new data.

There are no absolutes, we're just formulating theories to best fit what data we have now, and, if new conflicting data (or even existing data that was misunderstood/misread/misclassified as being irrelevant) disproves our theory we formulate a new one to try and account for the extra data.

[smj-edison]

Someone I know put this well: "science is just as gullible at following the latest trends. The difference is it corrects itself, where trends never do."

[awesome_dude]

I like that - and it's true, eventually science will correct itself, even in the face of ridicule from its own stalwarts (eg. the way that Robert Atkins was treated by the scientific community, right up until his theory [which was recycled] was proved with empirical data)