> you're going to be immensely disappointed by every other scientific field, as well.
Not every other field. We do have scientific theories that are reliable. But the reason they are reliable is that they are nailed down by extensive testing in controlled experiments that have confirmed their predictions to many decimal places. (I am speaking, of course, of General Relativity and the Standard Model of particle physics.) So we do know what actual reliable science looks like.
The problem, of course, is that there is not a lot of other science that actually looks like that, but it still gets called "science" anyway, and treated as though it is reliable even though it's not.
I said "every" because even some of the best work science has done, General Relativity and the Standard Model, were to my understanding an incompatible set of theories.
I did a bit of brief Googling, and it looks like some of that has been resolved and it isn't seen as totally incompatible anymore, but even that's not locked down as of yet.
Of note, it looks like there's a debate ongoing even within the citations about compatibility/non-compatibility, which I've never seen before on a Wikipedia page (I've done some light editing to separate out the relevant quotes from their related citations to improve readability):
>> Sushkov, A. O.; Kim, W. J.; Dalvit, D. A. R.; Lamoreaux, S. K. (2011). "New Experimental Limits on Non-Newtonian Forces in the Micrometer Range". Physical Review Letters. 107 (17): 171101. arXiv:1108.2547. Bibcode:2011PhRvL.107q1101S. doi:10.1103/PhysRevLett.107.171101. PMID 22107498. S2CID 46596924.
> "It is remarkable that two of the greatest successes of 20th century physics, general relativity and the standard model, appear to be fundamentally incompatible."
>> But see also Donoghue, John F. (2012). "The effective field theory treatment of quantum gravity". AIP Conference Proceedings. 1473 (1): 73. arXiv:1209.3511. Bibcode:2012AIPC.1483...73D. doi:10.1063/1.4756964. S2CID 119238707.
> "One can find thousands of statements in the literature to the effect that "general relativity and quantum mechanics are incompatible". These are completely outdated and no longer relevant. Effective field theory shows that general relativity and quantum mechanics work together perfectly normally over a range of scales and curvatures, including those relevant for the world that we see around us. However, effective field theories are only valid over some range of scales. General relativity certainly does have problematic issues at extreme scales. There are important problems which the effective field theory does not solve because they are beyond its range of validity. However, this means that the issue of quantum gravity is not what we thought it to be. Rather than a fundamental incompatibility of quantum mechanics and gravity, we are in the more familiar situation of needing a more complete theory beyond the range of their combined applicability. The usual marriage of general relativity and quantum mechanics is fine at ordinary energies, but we now seek to uncover the modifications that must be present in more extreme conditions. This is the modern view of the problem of quantum gravity, and it represents progress over the outdated view of the past."
> I said "every" because even some of the best work science has done, General Relativity and the Standard Model, were to my understanding an incompatible set of theories.
If you insist on treating either one as though it were a fully fundamental theory, capable of explaining absolutely everything, then yes, they are not compatible.
But you don't have to treat either theory that way in order to make the claim I was making. Even if both of those theories end up being approximations to some more fundamental theory, it remains true that, within the domains in which they have been tested, they make accurate predictions to many decimal places and have been shown to be thoroughly reliable. Certainly in any situation in which you might have to bet your life on one of those theories, you are going to be well within the domain in which they have been thoroughly tested. And within those domains, there is no incompatibility between them.
Not every other field. We do have scientific theories that are reliable. But the reason they are reliable is that they are nailed down by extensive testing in controlled experiments that have confirmed their predictions to many decimal places. (I am speaking, of course, of General Relativity and the Standard Model of particle physics.) So we do know what actual reliable science looks like.
The problem, of course, is that there is not a lot of other science that actually looks like that, but it still gets called "science" anyway, and treated as though it is reliable even though it's not.