Career suicide, yes, because all the tenured old guys had built careers on their theories and were making a bundle of money requiring their own books as college texts. It's an old saw that new theoretical work can't proceed until the previous generation of theorists is dead and gone. Unfortunately the "new generation" usually can't wait to assume the perks and privileges of the old one. They'll fight just as hard to suppress any ideas that conflict with their own.
This is a problem of human nature and institutional corruption that has nothing to do with the validity of the scientific method as Dr. Thorne implied.
Well put. Science is a method, not a body of knowledge, but scientists are human first, just like everyone else. One obvious difference is, we’re discussing this in a topic about new findings and conclusions that overthrow an entrenched belief. That’s not a commonplace in most human activity outside of the marketplace, where accepted products are replaced by something either cheaper or with some kind of other appeal.
“This is a problem of human nature and institutional corruption that has nothing to do with the validity of the scientific method as Dr. Thorne implied.”
Except...
When the practitioners invalidate scientific method by refusing to hold to the practice in order to puff their own egos and finances, the method isn’t about actual science.
It’s an old saw because gate keepers exist. Break those bottlenecks and you get more dynamic change.