Yep, science is imperfect yet it remains the best system we have. There are flaws: inherently so since it is a human pursuit and humans are not perfect. Fraud, orthodoxy and the like are always going to rear their head in human intellectual pursuit be it economics, theology or natural science.
We reduce the potential for crackpottery at the cost of increasing conservatism. It is a fine line, but there is no perfect place to sit anything, just better or worse ones. It is always good to have projects like the
Integrity in Science project.
The thing to remember is that for every scientist with the power to maintain orthodoxy for his own benefit, is a scientist with equal power and the motivation to topple the orthodoxy. Sure, it might mean that the small voices on both sides of the discussion don't get heard as much - and there have been many times when a scientist is in the right place and right time to publish a certain idea or finding...only for some bookish type to later point out that somebody came up with the idea a long time ago but that it was largely ignored.
Edited by Modulous, : No reason given.
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