[tacticalogic]

How about simply approaching science the way mathematicians approach problems? Which is to say, declare upfront whatever axioms apply to the particular investigation and otherwise keep an open mind.

It's also submitted that science shouldn't limit an investigation to only considering a limited set of possibilities. Declaring those axioms does exaclty that.

[Alamo-Girl]

I'd rather scientists not restrict their investigations beyond what is necessary to the investigation at hand.

And frankly, science has become so large and specialized that many if not most of the investigators work on extremely narrowly-defined projects. That is how it should be.

But other scientists investigate much broader subjects - e.g. cosmology, geometric physics, evolution. Unnecessary restrictions in these efforts can be counter-productive or misleading.