It stands to reason that ...

People who are fortunate to live in societies where science is highly valued come to see it as foundational, as the argument ending dictum.  Ironically, people tend to learn about science from fallacious appeals to authority.  

"For every expert there is an equal and opposite expert, but for every fact there is not necessarily an equal and opposite fact."  - Thomas Sowell

Debate is at the heart of science.  Debate can rage for a very long time.  It can be suppressed, but can also rise to the surface as a seemingly new controversy.  Resolution of debate happens when support for one set of arguments gains acceptance over opposing views.  In science, the ultimate arbiter is physical reality.  Science philosopher Karl Popper is perhaps best known for the criteria of falsifiability.  Unless a proposition concerning an experimental outcome can be tested, the proposition cannot be an hypothesis, and so it can never be a theory.  The proposition must be falsifiable.  This is widely accepted.  It is a very practical way to put a boundary around the idea of an hypothesis, to keep it from wandering into the realm of faery tales.  What is often called "the many worlds theory" credited to Hugh Everett, by this criteria of falsifiability, it is not a theory, and not even an hypothesis. It is an interpretation of Schrodinger's Equation, which was a conjecture because it was not derived. 

There is no way to check to see if at any instant of time, there is an infinity of new and unobservable universes created for each possible outcome of the Schrodinger Equation.  The "theory of evolution" is arguably neither an hypothesis nor theory because one central criteria for establishing empirical proof is repeatability.  We cannot create identical worlds and fiddle with parameters to see if the outcome of running a control and an experimental world confirms an hypothesis.  Nobody is going to witness the evolution of a human from inanimate matter.  We can, however, conduct experiments to see that living creatures do adapt themselves to changing circumstances, and this is micro-evolution.

So, by Popper's reasoning, the best we can do is to disprove an hypothesis.  If we fail to disprove, then gradually, it takes on the credibility of theory, at least ideally.  A theory still remains vulnerable to disproof.

Humility and awe in the face of Nature are real virtues.  We really cannot even know how much we cannot know, if we are to remain anchored empirically, which has proved to be a wise choice.  Other types of knowledge may exist, but for real substance, empiricism remains most reliable.  One wants facts to be stubborn as possible.

It stands to reason that if a society is in desperate need of something, that investigations into determining facts concerning the crucial thing would be unhindered and enhanced.  It may stand to reason, but it is an assumption.  What social or other forces could hinder the investigation into something of paramount importance, particularly if the investigation could be seen to clearly be empirically based?  This assumption then tends to be seen as so obvious as to be undoubted.  Beware of assumptions masquerading as fact.

Frank Whittle was a determined young man who faced major hurdles just to get into the military.  He eventually became an aerospace engineer who is credited with invention of the jet engine.  This old documentary tells many facts, but fails to reveal very much about the struggle that the young engineer faced, despite being a military officer, an accomplished engineer and fighter pilot.

There was no reason to disbelieve that a jet would work, but until it was demonstrated, to most minds, it remained just an idea.  Whittle was sure it would work, and he was right.

A man in his position was very unlikely to be a charlatan because he was under as much scrutiny as the military could care to bring to bear.  A charlatan works in shadows and takes advantage of poor understanding and weak perception.  At the time they were made, if the claims Whittle was making were correct, it might decisively transform the defenses of Britain from barely able into overwhelmingly offensive.  The claims, as demonstrated in bench tests starting in 1937 witnessed by plenty of qualified individuals, were correct.  Verifiable facts about the performance of the jet were available years before the start of WWII. 

Yet, these hard facts failed to influence the influential.  Why did they not act to "fast track" the development of Whittle's jet?  England's intellectual class had developed a pacifist attitude toward war, which might have thwarted R & D efforts toward war.  Pre-WWII, the "military-industrial complex" was not a full time obsession.  Yet, for military men, the planning for the next war must have been a constant concern.  Aircraft technology had advanced a great deal, and for those who had the ability to see what was possible, there was nothing more important than to advance military aircraft.

Whittle knew that jet aircraft would be much more powerful in terms of thrust per weight of the engine when compared to piston driven aircraft.  The ability to chase down slower enemy aircraft and escape them when pursued means a very great advantage in dogfights and evading enemy defenses.  As we have witnessed often, air superiority means domination and decimation of the enemy's forces.  This was not obvious to everyone, but Whittle saw it.

Apart from warfare, the competitive advantages of commercial aircraft businesses must have been a matter of concern to many business people.

In May of 1941, Whittle's jet was initially tested for a fully successful 10 hours in a series of flights.  Despite his successes, Whittle did not personally profit from his inventiveness until he left the UK and went to work for US corporations, which this linked article fails to mention.

So, even with the support of the British government, under the kind of existential threat posed in the battle of Britain, a very credible, well qualified and correct engineer was unable to give his country a military tool they desperately needed, over a span of decades.  

Randell Mills has less than no support from government, academia or military.  Yet, he has advanced his technology, which involved pushing the limits of material science to much higher temperatures than Whittle ever considered, to the point where it is now, apparently at the brink of Fire 2.0.  He started from absolutely nothing but a way to conceive of the electron in terms of classical physics.

It stands to reason that over enough time, good ideas will percolate to the surface, and will become recognized in history and written into college textbooks.  Unfortunately, that is simply a naive assumption.

It did not take a conspiracy to thwart Dr. Ignaz Semmelweis, the Hungarian obstetrician who discovered much of the cause of what was destroying the lives of so many of his patients.  While he is acknowledged today, I can attest that what happened to him is a painful memory for medical professionals.  These professionals enjoy the reputation of providing life saving and enhancing care to most of humanity, and they typically deserve it, but human social nature being what it is, even medicine is a tool of politics.  The monopolization and exploitation of medicine for political and purely profit making purposes has been demonstrated numerous times.  Is the same not true for all of knowledge?