Quote (Petecrack @ Dec 11 2011 04:04am)
No matter the methodology you are employing there will always be variables and room for error. Someone could 'test' a hypothesis in a 'controlled' environment with unforeseen factors pre-existing and resulting from the experiment which conclusively alter the findings. Those alterations, variables, etc may never be fully observed thus science is far from perfect. If you carry out an experiment under precise guidelines with minimal deviation from the objective path 100 times and your findings vary only 1 time out of those experiments then it can be logically asserted your findings are not an absolute truth. Hence, science is not perfect and any ideology can be contested no matter how seemingly thorough or fool-proof.
A good scientific publication should contain the error bars, of course. Scientific method is not about finding the 'absolut truth' in one experiment and everything is set and done, but about continously approaching the 'truth' step by step - and obviously everyone hopes that this approach will indeed converge against the 'truth', but this is not guaranteed.