Firestein had some interesting points with regards to how far off in the future some sciences await to observe certain phenomena. As an example, chemists usually don't have to wait long to see a type of decay compared to astrophysicists who in principle have to wait millions of years to see galaxy collisions (but computer simulations come in handy). I liked the idea of science allowing for 'childish curiosity and adult skepticism', I think this comes from discoveries being mostly unexpected and people wanting to learn more but still want to be careful with experimental results as these can be flawed, which makes them subject rigorous evaluation.
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This is a really interesting point to make! I think something interesting to think about is also how the results gained by these scientific experiments can then in turn affect their predictive system. In the case of astrophysicist they have to adapt their theories over longer periods of time and that makes it more difficult to maintain an accurate system. While chemist, instead, are able to vary their systems on a very recent basis and thus create more accurate systems in a shorter time span allowing more time to lessen the systems uncertainty.