My favorite demonstration of the value of science is scurvy.
Before scurvy was lastingly solved, the cure was discovered at least three distinct times within a century. In every case, the discoverer found a cure (like oranges, lemons, or raw meat) then made an untested assumption about the active agent (like acid, or avoiding tainted meat). They never tested those theories, but simply relied on circumstantial evidence and logic. The resulting treatments like lime juice and better food hygiene conformed to their theories, but did nothing to prevent scurvy.
From the present, it's easy to underestimate the power of the scientific method. We tend to think of it as what happens at universities, or as a format for writing a paper with a hypothesis, data, conclusions, and so on. The mere concept of testing one's theories seems too obvious to be a modern breakthrough. But that simple idea - that a theory shouldn't be accepted until its specific claim has been tested - was regularly ignored as late as World War One. It's hard to blame the Army for insisting on experimental evidence when "traditional medicine" and "statistical speculation" had been leaving soldiers with easily-curable scurvy only 20 years earlier.
Before scurvy was lastingly solved, the cure was discovered at least three distinct times within a century. In every case, the discoverer found a cure (like oranges, lemons, or raw meat) then made an untested assumption about the active agent (like acid, or avoiding tainted meat). They never tested those theories, but simply relied on circumstantial evidence and logic. The resulting treatments like lime juice and better food hygiene conformed to their theories, but did nothing to prevent scurvy.
From the present, it's easy to underestimate the power of the scientific method. We tend to think of it as what happens at universities, or as a format for writing a paper with a hypothesis, data, conclusions, and so on. The mere concept of testing one's theories seems too obvious to be a modern breakthrough. But that simple idea - that a theory shouldn't be accepted until its specific claim has been tested - was regularly ignored as late as World War One. It's hard to blame the Army for insisting on experimental evidence when "traditional medicine" and "statistical speculation" had been leaving soldiers with easily-curable scurvy only 20 years earlier.