What's with the scientist hate?
As a scientist myself, I can tell you that there is indeed no magic bullet when it comes to anything really. Science only disprove things. You never prove anything in science. That is the reason why we as scientist deal with theories that more often than not come with a set number of conditions after all.
And FYI he claimed to be a chemical engineer. It's a lot like being a plumber that plays with chemicals all day long.
Science is one thing; "cargo cult science" is another:
"Cargo Cult Science" by Richard Feynman
From a Caltech commencement address given in 1974
"In the South Seas there is
a cargo cult of people. During the war they saw airplanes with lots of good
materials, and they want the same thing to happen now. So they've arranged
to make things like runways, to put fires along the sides of the runways,
to make a wooden hut for a man to sit in, with two wooden pieces on his
head to headphones and bars of bamboo sticking out like antennas--he's the
controller--and they wait for the airplanes to land. They're doing
everything right. The form is perfect. It looks exactly the way it looked
before. But it doesn't work. No airplanes land. So I call these things
cargo cult science, because they follow all the apparent precepts and forms
of scientific investigation, but they're missing something essential,
because the planes don't land.
"Now it behooves me, of course, to tell you what they're missing. But it
would be just about as difficult to explain to the South Sea islanders how
they have to arrange things so that they get some wealth in their system.
It is not something simple like telling them how to improve the shapes of
the earphones. But there is one feature I notice that is generally missing
in cargo cult science. That is the idea that we all hope you have learned
in studying science in school--we never say explicitly what this is, but
just hope that you catch on by all the examples of scientific
investigation. It is interesting, therefore, to bring it out now and speak
of it explicitly. It's a kind of scientific integrity, a principle of
scientific thought that corresponds to a kind of utter honesty--a kind of
leaning over backwards. For example, if you're doing an experiment, you
should report everything that you think might make it invalid--not only
what you think is right about it: other causes that could possibly explain
your results; and things you thought of that you've eliminated by some
other experiment, and how they worked--to make sure the other fellow can
tell they have been eliminated.
"Details that could throw doubt on your interpretation must be given, if you
know them. You must do the best you can--if you know anything at all wrong,
or possibly wrong--to explain it. If you make a theory, for example, and
advertise it, or put it out, then you must also put down all the facts that
disagree with it, as well as those that agree with it. There is also a more
subtle problem. When you have put a lot of ideas together to make an
elaborate theory, you want to make sure, when explaining what it fits, that
those things it fits are not just the things that gave you the idea for the
theory; but that the finished theory makes something else come out right,
in addition.
"In summary, the idea is to give all of the information to help others to
judge the value of your contribution; not just the information that leads
to judgement in one particular direction or another."
