Science isn't self correcting. This is a harmful meme that we need to collectively put in the trash can, as it's constantly used by academics to evade accountability.
The core problem is people conflating science with Science™. The scientific method is a set of techniques that help people discover and report true things. But there are two huge problems with it:
1. What exactly is the scientific method? It's not like there's a constitutional amendment that lays it out. Try and pin people down and you'll discover nobody agrees on what science actually requires.
2. Even if some subset of people did write down a definition, nobody is checking anyone is following it.
So people conflate science the Platonic methodological ideal with Science™, the institutions that claim most forcefully to be its avatar. But those institutions have neither a definition nor any enforcement arm, so fraud and abuse runs rampant. There's no reason why anything should self correct in this environment outside of corporate science, where the self-correction mechanism is managerial intervention or, in the absence of that, bankruptcy.
The core problem is people conflating science with Science™. The scientific method is a set of techniques that help people discover and report true things. But there are two huge problems with it:
1. What exactly is the scientific method? It's not like there's a constitutional amendment that lays it out. Try and pin people down and you'll discover nobody agrees on what science actually requires.
2. Even if some subset of people did write down a definition, nobody is checking anyone is following it.
So people conflate science the Platonic methodological ideal with Science™, the institutions that claim most forcefully to be its avatar. But those institutions have neither a definition nor any enforcement arm, so fraud and abuse runs rampant. There's no reason why anything should self correct in this environment outside of corporate science, where the self-correction mechanism is managerial intervention or, in the absence of that, bankruptcy.