This has reached pathological proportions in the biological sciences, in which even the mildest speculation is greeted with skepticism at best, and more often with hostility. Equally stultifying is the approved style of writing scientific results for peer reviewed journals, which achieves the considerable feat of being simultaneously convoluted and vapid. What makes great science is the willingness and ability to go outside narrow frameworks. Any composer who simply sits at the keyboard hitting C-sharp all day will write sterile and mediocre stuff. Ditto with science.
Science is all about taking down divisions and reaching a larger understanding.
And yet, science today is all about jealously guarded divisions that have resulted in fiefdoms. People who try to reach across these boundaries are derided by their colleagues as fools or charlatans. Broadly defined, science is the understanding of the physical world. However, our imagination is an integral part of that comprehension, of the ability to transform mere observations into real knowledge, instead of least publishable units. Contrary to popular usage, which juxtaposes the words scientific and creative as antonyms, the best science comes from leaps of intuition.