lot of phenomena using a few basic principles, and even predict many new and exciting results, eventually new experiments (or more precise ones) show a discrepancy between the workings of nature and the predictions of the theory. In the strict sense this means that the theory was not "true'' after all; but the factremains that it is a very good approximation to the truth, at lest where a certain type of phenomena is concerned. When an accepted theory cannot explain some new data (which has been confirmed), the researchers working in that field strive to construct a new theory. This task gets increasingly more difficult as our knowledge increases, for the new theory should notonly explain the new data, but also all the old one: a new theory has, as its first duty, to devour and assimilate its predecessors. One other note about truth: science does not make moral judgments. Anyone who tries to draw moral lessons from the laws of nature is on very dangerous ground. Evolution in particular seems to suffer from this. At one time or another, it seems to have been used to justify Nazism, Communism, and every other -ism in between. These justifications are all completely bogus. Similarly, anyone who says "evolution theory is evil because it is used to support Communism'' has also strayed from the path of logic. The picture of scientists politely discussing theories, proposing new ones in view of new data, etc. appears to be completely devoid of any emotions. In fact, this is far from the truth, the discussions are very human, and although the bulk of the scientific community will eventually accept a single theory based on it explaining the data and making a series of verified predictions. In its simplest form, this question is unanswerable, since undetected fraud is immeasurable. Of course, there are many known cases of fraud in science. Some use this to argue that all scientific findings (especially those they disl...
