Scientific findings are provisional intermediate states that may later prove wrong

Evidence

In such a realistic view of science, every scientific finding, i.e. that which has currently passed the systematic questioning, is inevitably an intermediate state, which will be expanded in the future and embedded in superordinate contexts, but which can also turn out to be wrong in parts. Thus, one can only be a scientist if one does not think that one knows everything, but on the contrary can accept that one will never know everything. — Holm Gero Hümmler, Ulrike Schiesser, Fact and Prejudice, 747

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Theoretical claims lose their provisional character if stated too cleanly — Donna Landry and Gerald MacLean, The Spivak Reader: Selected Works of…, 2306

Related

• Science-skeptics misread science as memorized, unquestionable genius dogma (similarity 0.82)
• Future theories must reproduce current experimental results unchanged. (similarity 0.81)
• Theoretical claims lose their provisional character if stated too cleanly (similarity 0.79)