Being a science student (chemistry), I’m “drilled” to find the “thruth” about any problem. This way of thinking has become present in my “non-scientific” part of life too.
If you want to be a succesfull scientist, you have to be open minded though. The problem with most scientific knowledge is, that we can’t be 100% sure about some theory or series of experiments. Only one experiment that fails, even in a 100 years, forces you to change your or someone else’s theory.
Ignoring evidence that proves you where wrong is simply not an option. It does give you an excellent opportunity to refine the theory.
Some theory might give you a result of 80% in a certain reaction/process, but it seems 100%, since it has always been that way. So when you keep the parameters as described in that theory, you would never achieve a better result, without even knowing. That’s why we need to be pretty critical and open minded.
This could get frustrating; years of work that turn out to be useless when a new technique is discovered or when the theory where you based your work on fails after all. Or when you’re sure a theory is not perfect, but you can’t find the mistake.
Maybe in like 30 years, it turns out that the “knowledge” I use now, is totally wrong.
Then I’ll have to live with it
(in some palace with the shit loads of money I earned with it :p)