Re: your description of how science works.
Yes, that’s the way it is supposed to work. . . Except it doesn’t. You have logical fallacies rearing their heads all over the place in scientific research. One of the biggest is the Appeal to Authority Fallacy where a fact is not challenged because so-and-so renowned Scientist said it is so. If it’s written in the text books as fact, a law of science, etc., it is not likely to be challenged. . . even if it is flat out wrong. These established shibboleths can hold back scientific progress for decades.
For example, in this case there is a major one. Orthodox cosmologists hold it as a matter of faith that “there are no electric charges in space.” They are taught this in their Astronomy classes as a fact. They are taught another one as well: “Gravity is the force that drives the universe” and using that shibboleth they try to squish and squeeze every phenomena they see in the universe through the causality lens of Gravity, a monopolar force that results in some very strange pronouncements and contortions to make the observations fit. Dark matter and dark energy are examples of these contortions.
Once the existence of plasma physics and the flows of charges through space is accepted, the things we see through our telescopes, both optical and radio, are totally explicable. In fact we can create them in the plama physics laboratory and they are SCALABLE from the microscopic to the cosmic, and predictable, using plasma mathematics. EVERYTHING. No need for superstring theory, black holes, neutron stars, Quasars, dark matter, dark energy, and other unseen constructs of orthodox cosmology to explain the universe as a gravity run machine. All of the above become explainable under easily understood electric and electronic models in the flows of energy through highly charged plasma through space. . . something we can see everywhere we look. . . if they will only open their eyes, and stop listening to what they were told by those old dead scientists. . . who made a wrong assumption!
Ask an orthodox cosmologist to explain a Herbig Haro object. They will tell you about models of jets whirling like “lawn sprinklers” shooting hot gasses into space from a rapidly spinning star. They will never acknowledge that “hot gasses” really means “plasmas” which are matter stripped of their electrons, I.e., matter in a HIGHLY CHARGED state. They have no clue what keeps these Herbig Haro objects cohesive in spiraling forms over dozens of light years (hint: it’s NOT gravity!). They know about the solar wind flowing from our sun, but they really have no clue of the source of the CHARGES it carries. Ask them about the composition of a comet. . . and why the Electric Universe cosmologists CORRECTLY predicted they were not “dirty snowballs” and would be found to be indistinguishable from every other asteroid (true). . . except in the HIGH ELECTRIC CHARGE THEY CARRY!
These predictions went against the shibboleth “facts” that your mainstream scientific method had produced and taught everyone so that no one would PERMIT any research that looked at anything different! This worship of orthodoxy is found in EVERY FIELD of science today, much to the peril of our future advances.
Don’t even get me started on scientific fraud and politics that distort the beauty of true science that gives us the crap like what’s happened to climatology.
I agree with you that there is a lot of politics and bad science out there. I saw a program about some scientists who were questioning the idea that the universe is expanding. They had some pretty compelling evidence that seemed to contradict the big bang theory. They were basically black balled. Scientists aren’t perfect and some are down right dishonest. I have been really intrigued by the whole LENR thing. I hope it is true but I am skeptical. A lot of things are thought to be impossible and someone discovers differently. I do know though that as far as gaining knowledge about the universe, science and reason are all we have.