We have to distinguish the core of science from the frontier

The Half-life of Facts by Samuel Arbesman. Page 163.

Science is not always cumulative, as the philosopher of science Thomas Kune has noted. There are setbacks, mistakes, and wrong turns. Nonetheless, we have to distinguish the core of science from the frontier, terms used by SUNY Stony Brook's Stephen Cole. The core is the relatively stable portion of what we know in a certain field, the facts we don't expect to change. While it's no doubt true that we will learn new things about how DNA works and how our genes are turned on and off, it's unlikely that the basic mechanism of encoding genes in DNA is some sort of mesofact. While this rule of how DNA contains the information for proteins - known as the central dogma of biology - has become more complex over time, its basic principles are part of the core of our knowledge. This is what is generally considered true by consensus within the field, and often makes its way into textbooks.

On the other hand, the frontier is where most of the upheaval of facts occur, from the daily churn in what the newspapers tell us is healthy and unhealthy, to the constant journal retractions, clarifications, and replications. That's where scientists live, and in truth, that's where the most exciting stuff happens. The frontier is often where most scientists lack a clear idea of what will become settled truth.

As John Ziman, a theoretical physicist who thought deeply about the social aspects of science, noted:

The scientific literature is strewn with half-finished work, more or less correct but not completed with such care and generality as to settle the matter once and for all. The tidy comprehensiveness of undergraduate Science, marshalled by the brisk pens of the latest complacent generation of textbook writers, gives way to a nondescript land, of bits and pieces and yawning gaps, vast fruitless edifices and tiny elegant masterpieces, through which the graduate student is expected to find his way with only a muddled review article as a guide.