I've just read all of an article here:
http://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/saving-science
(h/t Judith Curry, who discusses extracts of the article here:
https://judithcurry.com/2016/08/22/dan-sarewitz-on-saving-science/).
It's a penetrating analysis of what's wrong with science today. There are a number of lessons to be learnt, but one that may apply in this discussion could be characterised as
pareidolia in the sense of seeing patterns in data and drawing unwarranted inferences from that, which end up as part of consensual or non-consensual "reality". In either case, sometimes it's not a case of which is correct and which incorrect, but more that patterns are what creates our sense of reality. Science has been increasingly tending to focus not on useful technological outcomes, but rather on the search for world views that scientists pursue
en masse just because they can and that's the way they can get on in their chosen profession. It's all a big game pursuant to the aim not of generating useful results, but of propping up the scientific establishment, and thereby their egos.
In this, I think Brandenburg is as much at fault as those with more conventional views: it's just that his views happen to be in the minority. Conventional or unconventional is besides the point; for all we know, both points of view may be utter bollocks -- excuse the French -- which is why I find myself adopting a completely agnostic stance.
One faction sees one kind of pattern, and another, another. The conventionalists may talk in terms of the origin of Xe-129 being a result of supernova explosions, but are we actually sure that "supernovae" can be explained in terms of the current scientific consensus? Are they nuclear explosions, or the result of events in a plasma universe that have some characteristics we think of as being caused by nuclear explosions? Same with the Sun, really; we can detect or infer nuclear events associated with it, but that doesn't mean it primarily exists as a nuclear generator; rather, nuclear reactions may be occurring in the high temperatures caused by plasma behaviour, which could be the primary driver of nuclear reactions that are secondary and incidental.
One point in the article that comes across strongly is that the idea that scientists, in a free and unfettered way, should explore science, out of which will drop useful technology. Which in turn is deemed to warrant our accepting the virtual infallibility of scientists, thereby stoking up their egos. Fact is, the more we've allowed them to do that, the more they've gotten themselves lost in an orgy of pareidolic speculation.
On the other hand, the primary way to make progress is to pursue tightly-focussed objectives: find a vaccine for this, build a vehicle that can do that, find a way to develop agriculture in presently barren areas, and so on. Out of that, the need for basic research in these areas quite naturally emerges. But at the moment, we're drowning in huge masses of data in which any number of patterns can be found; forever searching for links with existing, consensually accepted patterns, which if one looks hard enough, are sure to be found.
Most scientists can readily accept the pareidolia in patterns observed on the Martian surface, but are somewhat blind to the possible (if not probable) pareidolia involved in such things as CAGW, the HIV-AIDS link, the current cosmological model, and so on.
Here's one dictionary definition of pareidolia:
pareidolia
/ˌpæraɪˈdəʊlɪə/
noun
1. the imagined perception of a pattern or meaning where it does not actually exist, as in considering the moon to have human features
Word Origin
C20: from para- + eidolon
para-
Word Origin
1. a prefix appearing in loanwords from Greek, most often attached to verbs and verbal derivatives, with the meanings “at or to one side of, beside, side by side” (parabola; paragraph; parallel; paralysis), “beyond, past, by” (paradox; paragogue); by extension from these senses, this prefix came to designate objects or activities auxiliary to or derivative of that denoted by the base word ( parody; paronomasia), and hence abnormal or defective ( paranoia), a sense now common in modern scientific coinages (parageusia; paralexia).
eidolon
[ahy-doh-luh n]
Word Origin
noun, plural eidola
[ahy-doh-luh, eidolons.
1. a phantom; apparition.