While, as Feynman describes, "Science" absolutely aims to be better, scientists are also human animals and language (or maybe more aptly "imitation") instincts run deep throughout the animal kingdom.
There are pros & cons. On the one hand mistakes like The Cargo Cult propagate. On the other hand, so do skills & shortcuts. There are fine lines between imitating & pretending, practice & pretension. Nature videos show little predator cubs often doing "practice attacks" with siblings... I've no idea what the rate of failing to hold back on a bite is, but presumably the "play" serves most of them well later on in their lives in real hunts.
In short, and very related to Feynman's essay, it's also very easy to fool oneself into thinking one has solved The Demarcation Problem [1] without actually doing so in a way portable/persuadable to other minds. (But Feynman was surely a true genius and would probably have acknowledged the incompleteness of his account in what was after all only a brief graduation speech!)
There are pros & cons. On the one hand mistakes like The Cargo Cult propagate. On the other hand, so do skills & shortcuts. There are fine lines between imitating & pretending, practice & pretension. Nature videos show little predator cubs often doing "practice attacks" with siblings... I've no idea what the rate of failing to hold back on a bite is, but presumably the "play" serves most of them well later on in their lives in real hunts.
In short, and very related to Feynman's essay, it's also very easy to fool oneself into thinking one has solved The Demarcation Problem [1] without actually doing so in a way portable/persuadable to other minds. (But Feynman was surely a true genius and would probably have acknowledged the incompleteness of his account in what was after all only a brief graduation speech!)
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demarcation_problem