For example research into road traffic accidents may refer to 'sunrise' and 'sunset' which is of course a sun-moves-round-the-earth model.

It's a matter of objective perceptive pragmatics to speak of sunrise and sunset; likewise the movement of stars in the night sky and precession which is all down to the moving / wobbling earth but when you're on the earth the evidence of that is heavenly rather that terrestrial. Even the shivering skyclad pagans who watch the solstice sunrise accept that - and not even the most pedantic of scientists would ever call it The Solstice Earthfall, though it does have a certain ring...

Talking about rings and soltices, and getting back to early evidences for scentific enquiry, I'd say the Large Hadron Collider is the Stonehenge of our times. Enquiry and Enlighenment define our humanity, and the Atheistic Tradition stretches back to the very crack. Religion and God are just lazy habits we slipped into somewhere along the way for the sake of oppression and political control, although some scientific discoveries might be described as unfortunate in that respect - such as the discovery of the causal link between sexual intercourse and pregnancy which has defined the Patriarchal order of things ever since, especially in such Evil Institutions as the Unholy Roman Catholic Church.