The system’s resilience is evident in its historical trajectory. The retraction of Andrew Wakefield’s fraudulent 1998 study linking vaccines to autism—a process spanning over a decade—demonstrates how peer critique, failed replications, and institutional accountability ultimately rectify harm, albeit imperfectly. Similarly, the ongoing refinement of climate models illustrates how iterative feedback (e.g., incorporating ocean heat uptake data) sharpens predictive accuracy.
Critics often conflate individual failures (fraud, bias) with systemic failure, ignoring the method’s built-in error-detection mechanisms. While the “publish or perish” culture can incentivize haste, the scientific ethos demands that all claims—no matter how prestigious their origin—remain subordinate to evidence. As physicist Richard Feynman argued, “Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts.”
This self-correcting nature distinguishes science from ideological frameworks resistant to disconfirmation (e.g., denialist movements that dismiss overwhelming climate evidence). By institutionalizing doubt, science transforms its greatest vulnerability—the human propensity for error—into its defining strength.