There's also the fallacy that scientists will only make pure objective decisions but scientists are in the end only humans and have their own believes, failings and political agendas. The whole system of peer reviewing and the acknowledgement that every scientific theory can be falsified is a testament to this realization. Unfortunately I have the impression that in politics too often individual experts are only heard and thus the whole system of checks and balances in science is circumvented and particular scientific opinions might get more weight than justified.
Still, I believe that the scientific methodology (not necessarily individual scientists) is still our best hope to actually achieve improvements as shown by our rapidly expanding knowledge since it was more formally defined. It just has to be tempered with clear political goals.
Not sure if that's the falsifiability you meant, but a scientific theory _must_ be falsifiable by definition. As in -- there must be a way to setup an experiment with a possible outcome that would prove this theory to be wrong. It is impossible to disprove a theory that "invisible pink unicorns exist" -- because for every suggested experiment you can just say "well, they are invisible, so we can't see them". Of course falsifiability is not the worst problem with this particular theory (how can something be pink and invisible bothers me more for example), but it is a necessary condition any scientific theory must meet.
I brought up falsifiability casually because it is an important corner stone for my understanding of the scientific methodology and keeps scientists from proclaiming dogmas (or at least it should). It is also an acknowledgement that our current theories mostly reflect our current understanding and may be prone to change in the feature.
scientists are in the end only humans and have their own believes, failings and political agendas. The whole system of peer reviewing and the acknowledgement that every scientific theory can be falsified is a testament to this realization.
I fully agree with the first part, but care to explain how "believes, failing and political agendas" relates to the concept of falsifiability?
Still, I believe that the scientific methodology (not necessarily individual scientists) is still our best hope to actually achieve improvements as shown by our rapidly expanding knowledge since it was more formally defined. It just has to be tempered with clear political goals.