I bring this up because many scientists believe that because science is such a superior method of extracting information about the world around us, and constructing predictive models which have been shown to have great utility, that that means that they as scientists can simply transfer their godlike powers to other domains with the greatest of ease. But as the above should make clear I believe this is a false perception, because the power of science arises from the intersection of the communal wisdom of tens of thousands of individuals over decades with the nature of the subject at hand. Granted, there are individual geniuses of great brilliance such as the great Isaac Newton, but the outcomes of his dabbling in alchemy and scriptural hermeneutics should go to illustrate that cognition applied to a fool's errand only results in glorious foolery.

We’re all familiar with the basics of evolution: that a munificent monkey-goddess birthed us all from Her banana-scented womb. But there are some lesser-discussed implications of natural selection that are just plain weird...

In my evolution course, I note that "Darwin spent 20 years working out his ideas and gathering evidence" before releasing On the Origin of Species in 1859. I don't say he "delayed" publication purposely, though in many cases this long period from idea to outcome has been attributed to fear of the reaction from the clergy, colleagues, society at large, his wife, etc.  On this issue, a few bloggers have pointed to a recent essay by John van Wyhe (2007), in which it is argued that there was no delay based on fear, only a protracted writing period. Other historians do not necessarily agree, though the blogs I saw did not mention this. As Odling-Smee (2007) says,

...several Darwin scholars are not convinced.