The basic Baha'i principle that science and religion are in agreement means we cannot draw and arbitrary dividing line between the two, saying that search in the religious arena is acceptable, but the use of more scientific or academic methods is suspect. In fact, in some ways the entire controversy centers upon whether or not academic methods are a legitimate means of examining Baha'i texts, history and beliefs, especially when people using such methods express opinions that are challenging to the status quo. If it does not accord with scientific principles and the processes of reason, it is superstition. For God has endowed us with faculties by which we may comprehend the realities of things, contemplate reality itself. What is especially interesting in this statements of is that it is religion that has to compromise, i.e. religion must conform to science, not the other way around.
Science has no obligation whatsoever to conform the answers it discovers to religious doctrine.
Now, certainly both Baha'u'llah and 'Abdu'l-Baha condemned the destructive effects of science when it has detached itself from the basic moral principles brought to us through the Manifestations of God. But this does not imply that science must conform its answers to religious doctrine. In fact, the concept most commonly associated with the search for truth in the Writings of Baha'u'llah is that of detachment. Later in that same book, in the portion known as the Tablet of the True Seeker, we are warned that we must beware that our own loves and hates do not lead us astray in our search. I cannot find any basis in the Baha'i Writings for any sort of restriction whatsoever to any kind of investigation except those that have to do with the moral qualities of the seeker.