In the last section I pointed out that formal academic research stresses precision and repeatability in experiment. I also noted that precision can produce an illusion of accuracy; it is quite possible to be very precisely and repeatedly wrong.
How can this occur? Part of the answer is that information - like emotion - exists in an invisible world; it can't be seen directly, but can only be visualized through the mind's eye. If we picture information about reality as water we can begin to understand some of the systematic errors which can occur in science.
Most information - like most water on this planet - exists in a single vast interlinked sea; the sea of information. That information; appearance, height, weight, race, sound of voice, color of hair, smell, feel, athletic ability, age, education, etc is available to anyone with the standard human input sensors; eyes, ears, nose, feel, and taste. Some of the information is immediately apparent, some requires research to obtain, some is subject to interpretation, and may be ambiguous; some may even be falsified.
Like the actual sea, the sea of information is subject to storms (of controversy) and periodic waves (like the current wave of political correctness) which flow over it.
Some information is like an underground river flowing beneath a desert; there may be no hint that the information even exists, and no one may even search for it.
Some information is like a flowing river; if you attempt to measure the flow of the river you may obtain results which are at great variance to what is actually occurring with the river. For example if you were to insert your flow measuring equipment in a place where a small turbulent vortex was formed by the flow of the river past an obstructing rock - you might obtain a very high velocity reading which was in direct opposition to the actual flow of the river, and anyone duplicating your measurement would obtain similar results. (Remember the world of information is a blind world; it is not possible to see what is actually happening.)
Imagine for a second that you were attempting to estimate the size and volume of a reservoir by measuring a few drops of water seeping through a dam. I think that it is easy to see that the frequency and velocity of a few drops of water obtained this way could utterly fail to convey to you the size and magnitude of the reservoir in back of the dam.
To switch analogies any experiment which is difficult to perform is like an electrical circuit with a source impedance which is much higher than the impedance of the measuring instrument. Given these circumstances even a normally accurate and precise meter will give inaccurate results. Information has an impedance much like electricity does; how difficult the information is to obtain determines how high the source impedance of the information is.
This explains why conflicting theories to explain a scientific experiment can exist. Measured in one way a high impedance source can give entirely different results than when it is measured in another; leading to conflicting explanations of what is occurring. The easier information is to obtain the lower its source impedance and the less likely there is to be controversy about its nature.
An example may illustrate what I am saying. Most people, upon meeting me, would decide that I was a human male; very few would think that I was female polar bear. However, were I to live in the polar regions of Alaska, and to wear the fur of a polar bear to keep warm, and the only information you could obtain about me was a blurry photograph taken in a blizzard the percentage of people who thought that I was a female polar bear would rise substantially. It is the difficulty of obtaining the information, and not some experimental error in getting it which leaves the information subject to misinterpretation.
Science utterly fails to address the problem of source impedance in obtaining information, concentrating on precision and repeatability - which may create an illusion of accuracy - to give its results. As information about reality becomes more and more difficult to obtain, the source impedance of that information distorts our view of what is actually occurring in the phenomena that are being measured.