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"Dogmas" are pretty much never disproven. (Technically, outside of mathematics, they can't be.)

Science is a long process of lots of people looking at lots of data and coming up with different explanations to make sense of it all. Some of these explanations make more sense than others, but it's pretty much guaranteed that even the experts won't be able to agree on which ones. As new data and new generations of researchers emerge, the explanations evolve, consolidate, and sometimes are discarded again. In short: science is a mess of opinions, gradually moving along.

If you want to get a feel for what that looks like in practice, have a look at this blog post about diverging opinions in ecology: https://dynamicecology.wordpress.com/2018/04/30/poll-results... (Most of the hypotheses he explores are current "textbook knowledge"!)



A new 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. . . . An important scientific innovation rarely makes its way by gradually winning over and converting its opponents: it rarely happens that Saul becomes Paul. What does happen is that its opponents gradually die out, and that the growing generation is familiarized with the ideas from the beginning: another instance of the fact that the future lies with the youth.

— Max Planck, Scientific autobiography, 1950, p. 33, 97


I wonder if Planck was speaking truth, or making this up because it sounded clever. And I wonder how damaging this statement has been.


As the saying goes: "Science advances, one funeral at a time" ;-)




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