Ok, so I am easily distracted. I seem to have gone off the claimed topic a bit in my previous post. This time, I will actually attempt to stay on point.

Expertise is an important indicator of the soundness of a science. There are a number of metrics by which we can measure degrees of expertise. The difficulty is in ascertaining the consistency of the parts. That is to say that if a discipline is real, its practitioners should be able to readily identify experts in the field while just as easily dismissing charlatans out of hand. Another feature which we generally overlook is that the tendency is for real science to arrive at solutions independently from different directions and in agreement. This is the case, that is, for mature sciences. In newer topics, we expect merely that disparate groups or disciplines are converging towards a solution or model.

We generally find that new publications do not disprove old theorems. Rather, they propose refinements. Adjustments of models over decades of rigorous science is expected. Overturning of well-established scientific principles, on the other hand, would require an enormous amount of incontrovertible evidence inconsistent with theory.