By discarding the usual identification of rationality and justification, the critical rationalism of Karl Popper repudiates science's authority, yet consistently defends science's achievement.
Skepticism is true, but relativism is false.
All that can be said, according to these relativist philosophers, is that science has been vastly successful in grabbing headlines, and that this success calls for sociological or political explanation. Faced with such detraction, scientists characteristically retort that science, unlike witchcraft, works. I allude here only in passing to the doctrine that science has conclusive or unimpeachable authority. Few now think this. But what many defenders of science do think is that science verges on the indubitable.