Why is this important? One of science’s great claims to special status and credibility is that it is “self-correcting” – i.e., that when new data comes in showing something that conflicts with scientific conclusions, scientists supposedly change their conclusions.

Except that, too often, they do not, at least not very easily. The accepted scientific wisdom does change, but usually because new scholars take up the correction, not because the old guard “self-corrects.” Think I am either joking? Then consider what the great Nobel laureate and nuclear physicist, Max Planck, once said: “A scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it.”