Rare gas MRI imaging offers a paradigm of basic research, illustrating why good scientists pursue their own stars, and why the government should support them. The rules of scientific exchange that you list in the June issue of APS News are not applicable to those working in cosmology and on question of origins. Replication is not something that we can do with unique events. Experimental data can be gathered entirely by means of mechanical devices. However, the whole of reality may encompass more than the physical.
Science is amoral.
This sounds much like the definition of physics high school teachers love to use with beginning students, and is intrinsically myopic. Were that criterion applied, most of what we sincerely believe constitutes the practice of science would be disqualified. Let us not fall into the trap of proposing a silly statement because it is brief and sounds significant. As scientists, many of us regard the ability to explain what has already been observed as an insufficient test of scientific understanding. We need to emphasize the role of experimentally verifiable predictions with quantified levels of ambiguity in our work.