So it is important to balance the OPERA mini-fiasco with another hot-off-the-presses neutrino story that illustrates why, even though mistakes in individual scientific experiments are common, collective mistakes in science are rare. A discipline such as physics has intrinsic checks and balances that significantly reduce the probability of errors going unrecognized for long.
The eagerness with which scientists will say “Whoa, hold on a moment” is a major reason I find the conspiracy theories about science — e.g. how we’re suppressing alternatives to relativity and quantum mechanics (mainly, through my filter of being a physicist) — so funny.
But this article is about more than the process: there’s some neutrino physics in there as well.