We may, to be more precise, have to relinquish the notion, explicit or implicit, that changes of paradigm carry scientists and those who learn from them closer and closer to the truth

In the developed sciences, theories tend either to become widely accepted and built into the larger edifice of well-tested human knowledge or else they suffer destruction in the face of recalcitrant facts and are abandoned, perhaps regretfully as a “nice try.” But in fields like personology and social psychology, this seems not to happen. There is a period of enthusiasm about a new theory, a period of attempted application to several fact domains, a period of disillusionment as the negative data come in, a growing bafflement about inconsistent and unreplicable empirical results, multiple resort to ad hoc excuses, and then finally people just sort of lose interest in the thing and pursue other endeavors.

Science … commits suicide when it adopts a creed.

I think the weird thing about being a scientist, or an academic in general, is you have to believe really strongly in what you do, while questioning it all the time ... and that's a hard balance to have.

Scientists tend to risk theories they admire

Science commits suicide when it adopts a creed.

it must also be realized that a paradigm has the power to keep a whole community of scientists working on a more or less common area. In a sense, it could be taken as an unconscious or tacit form of consent. At first sight, the paradigm would be of obvious use to the scientific community. However, it also exacts a price in that the mind is kept within certain fixed channels that deepen with time until an individual scientist is no longer aware of his or her limited position.

ينتحر العلم إذا اعتنق عقيدة

The danger comes when a distrust of doctrinaire social systems eases over into a dissolute disregard for principle. A disregard for enduring principle delivers a society, eviscerated, over to the ideologists.

For dear me, why abandon a belief
Merely because it ceases to be true

abandoning science is the road back into poverty and backwardness

When the need for someone else's love or approval outweighs one's own, self-betrayal is near.

If enough data points trouble the theory, the theory may be wrong. If the theory is basic, the paradigm may have to change.

The way of science is paved with discarded theories which were once declared self-evident;