Little Hawk,

when I was 17 I believed in flying saucers and ancient astronauts.

BTW, I'm very different from you at 17. Authorities have to be questioned permanently and not to be respected from a position of faith. Some may gain my respect by the way they write and argue. Science for me is fascinating for what authorities write is permanently under question.

Science is not a set of to be learned results (though boring teacher can manage to present it this way), but a method of questioning. When I teach research methods, each week the students get the task to think about results and to come up with many possible explanations for the result.

Example 1: People who have learned to swim early in life earn more money later

Example 2: The incidence of Schizophrenia is related to social status in the USA, but unrelated in Germany.

Example 3: People in towns have a higher spontaneous walking speed than people in villages

And many more of those. You get the idea. I do not care at all who gets the correct explanation (in some examples I don't even know what the correct explanation is), good is the one who gets many different possible explanations and can argue for (or against) them. Often I get surprised by an explanation I had not yet thought of.

The heart of the scientific method is to doubt and to try to find alternative theories or explanations. And then of course to put them to test. And do it well, for others will find loopholes in your argumentation or experimental setup.

Your description of science is so far from my science, it is not even a parody.

The idea that scientists could for long be persuaded to cover up, is ridiculous. Not because individual scientist are without fail. They are on the average as jealous, fraudulent, obstinate, self-serving as people in other professions are. But because self-correcting procedures are built in. If you spot an error in your colleague's argument you publish that. If you find data inconsistent with a theory, you publish. If the theory is famous (and wrong) you will get famous too (and get perhaps the Nobel prize). On the long run, nothing which is wrong can stand for a long time. Someone will point out the inconsistencies sooner or later. For the fame of it and for the money accompanying the fame.

Wolfgang