Sorry, but the contrarian approach to science (as in the markets), is often a reliable indicator. Thomas Kuhn, Harvard historian and physics instructor, destroyed the icon that you are placing before us in the early 60's.
He described how institutional science worked. Establishment science, which he called "normal science", operated on the most and agreeable theory of a given era. But as anomalies in the theory appeared in increasing numbers, the establishment became defensive and insecure.
And, always, the new theory is not accepted until the Old Guard can be slowly vanquished. Imo this is exactly what is happening currently in science with the great number of alternative physicists and cosmologists that are rising to prominence. The diehard materialist movement that was crowned the new King of All Science at the Darwin Centennial in 1959 is now experiencing anomalies and does not want to share its throne....
To quote Hoyle: "Explosions do not usually lead to well-ordered situations" and "a commonsense interpretation of the facts suggest that a superintellect has monkeyed with physics, as well as chemistry and biology."
Again, Hoyle was far from a traditional theist, but he was also far from a traditional materialist.
