The Power of the Scientific Method
Science
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How does the scientific method work?
1. Form hypothesis on unknown factor.
2. Test hypothesis with controlled experiment.
3. Try to synch new data from test with old hypotheses that were proved valid.
So when you find something new, first you have to go back and make sure it's not something old you personally have never seen before or experimental error. It's often the case that young people rush to conclusions, even scientists. So the veterans who've actually been working towards a unified theory their whole careers have seen a thousand young turks pop up with claims to solve puzzles that turned out to be false.
How many times does it take before you're jaded? Ten? Twenty? Six hundred? Eventually, it gets to you and even the greatest scientists are human. How could you not be skeptical of something like quasi-crystals when it first pops up?
But, the wheels turn and now he's got a Nobel Prize. Scientists will be scientists and even if they mock you as a knee jerk reaction, they'll double check your data and retry your experiments just to be sure, provided you did the job right.
The moral of the story is that scientific skepticism works. The peer review process is absolutely brutal and poor pseudoscientist crackpots accuse the process of being too close-minded. However, the beauty is that no matter how vigorously an idea is attacked, if it agrees with experiment it survives.
If your (the general you, not the person I quoted) crackpot hypothesis cannot hold up to the brutality of the scientific process, that's not a problem with the process, that's a problem with your hypothesis.
The Difference
Science
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The scientific method lets you check whether what you believe to be true is actually true, or if it is a figment of your imagination.
For centuries people believed things because it seemed 'right'. The problem is that that version of 'right' varies all over the world. You got sick, or lightning burned your church down, because God was upset with you.
Science lets you check whether what is in your head matches the external world. Science showed that t was microscopic germs that caused disease. That knowledge led to sanitation and hygiene, which proved to be dramatically better than prayer or sacrifices at preventing disease.
The lessons from medical conditions such as Copras Delusion should teach us humility about how our brains work. We load the dice very much in favor of our own prejudices. It is only by checking it against the real world that you can decide.
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