God. Real. Right.

This article is not about scientists; it is about science. And it is not about whether or why scientists actually do or don’t tell the truth; it is about why it is impossible for science to tell the truth. There is no way even to broach this subject effectively in a single post–a fact discovered through many vain attempts. So instead, here is a very brief setting, and three very brief paragraphs leading to a very brief, albeit accurate, conclusion. Later posts can address each of the pieces at somewhat greater length, including the issues in parentheses at the end of each.
Setting: this opinion is not Luddite. It’s neither anti-science nor anti-technology. Indeed, both science and technology are amazing results of the scientific-empirical or hypothetico-inductive method. The power and practicality of engineers and the acumen and creativity of scientists have changed the world and continue to provide societies which respect individualism with a functional advantage over the rest of the world. (the ethics of technology; the rise of scientism; freedom and science)
But.
There is a huge difference between making things work and getting to the truth. Anyone approaching this question must take three steps: defining what science is, understanding what it does, and either understanding or defining truth. Taking those three admittedly gargantuan steps ought to be a solid enough base from which to evaluate the relationship between science and truth.
Step 1: defining what science is. Science is defined both by how and what it studies. “How science does” is the easy part of this question, and the basis for the other part too. Science is only science when it uses the scientific (or empirical, or inductive) method. Defined with a variety of terms and structures, it amounts to observation, hypothesis, experimentation, repetition, and finally theorizing. If it does not use that method of defining the issue and studying it by contrived experience (experimentation) then it is not science—by definition. But the requirement to use that method limits the subject matter available for study. For instance, the scientific method can easily be applied to physics, chemistry, or biology. But it can also be applied to any phenomena (a phenomenon is anything that appears, or is experienced.) So while God cannot be the subject of science, religious practice can be. (John Stuart Mill, inductive method; Karl Popper, falsificationism, objective knowledge, the three worlds; Jean Baudrillard)
Step 2: understanding what science does. Science solves practical problems. Many people seem to have the impression that science randomly ranges to and fro in the world of all possible facts and objectively discovers truths in a gradual approach to comprehensive truth. Not one bit of that description is accurate. Science does not range randomly. Scientists subjectively choose either a particular domain or a particular problem within that domain for one of two reasons: an anomaly or a practical problem. If the Earth is believed to be the object around which all other objects in space revolve, yet there appear several moons revolving around Jupiter, then a scientist begins to hypothesize about why that observation is inconsistent with the current theory of the solar system, and then follows the rest of the method to its end. Or, if people are constantly dying of bacterial infections and a scientist notices a particular mold which kills a variety of bacteria, then he begins to hypothesize about how that mold might be used as a generic anti-biotic, and the rest of the method serves to provide a solution to a long-time human problem. In the former case (geo- and helio-centrism), the scientist might conclude that there are giant ovular raceways along which the planets race around the sun, or that a newly defined force, gravity, is responsible for their newly-understood-as-consistent motion. Either way, the conclusion of the method is simply a successful integration of theory and experience. Similarly, in the latter case (penicillin), the scientist may conclude that the penicillin makes a toxic byproduct which kills the bacteria, or that the penicillin actually eats the bacteria. But once the fact that malignant bacteria are destroyed is established, the path to practical treatment of infections is inevitable. Again, once theory and experience successfully merge, the method is finished. That is, the scientific method by definition does not provide an ultimate statement about reality. Rather, it solves problems. That fact makes science both extremely powerful and profoundly limited. Since the method concludes when theory successfully accounts for necessarily limited observations (no one anywhere has universal experience), the method is instrumental rather than capable of making metaphysical claims. (classical realism, critical realism, and instrumentalism; Thomas Kuhn, puzzle-solving, and paradigms)
Step 3: understanding or defining truth. This step is not about the content of truth (e.g., what is true), which would be about particular claims, or even about a particular person, as John 14:6. It is about the concept of truth itself. One very basic misconception about truth is confusing it with fact. Facts are simply realities. Truth, on the other hand, is an evaluation of claims about those facts. That it is raining is a fact. For a person to say it is raining when it really is raining is truth. So whenever there is a correspondence between what a person is thinking-and-saying (so presuming sincerity) and what actually is the case, there is truth. (Of course, there is much more detail required about justification and such, but the general description is right.) In Aristotelian terms, to say of what is that it is, and of what is not that it is not, is truth. Because access to “what is” is so severely limited, many theorists have argued for other definitions of truth. But none of those definitions succeeds at satisfying both the requirement for internal consistency–a weakness of pragmatic “truth”–and for the exclusion of contrary truth claims–a weakness of coherence theory. (correspondence, coherence, and pragmatic theories of truth)
Conclusion: science’s exclusion from truth and ethics. So ultimately scientists are stuck on the horns of a dilemma. Either there is no truth (because correspondence theory fails) or truth is about factual realities to which subjects do have access (because correspondence theory succeeds). If the former is the case, scientists have no more claim to truth than anyone else—a sad state indeed. But in the latter case, scientists are in an oddly binding position. While a subject has immediate access to the content of evaluative and rational claims, the same subject absolutely cannot have that same access to the objects or content of empirical or inductive claims. Evaluative and deductive claims are what they are because of their immediacy and certainty. Inductive claims are what they are because of the repetition required to make purely instrumental claims. So there is a classically realistic relationship (or even identification) between rational claims and rational facts. Because of that correspondence, rational and evaluative claims must deal with the issue of truth. But there is a purely functional or instrumental relationship (and not even the theoretical possibility of identification) between empirical claims or conclusions and empirical facts. Without that realistic correspondence, truth is excluded from science’s domain. (Occam’s razor; necessity and contingency; Bertrand Russell, knowledge by acquaintance and knowledge by description)
A truth is an end. An instrument is a means. While science cannot tell anyone where they ought to go, it can get them there. And while science cannot say what is right, it can do it, and it ought to be limited to practices so defined. So enough with science as king. Science is the greatest butler ever—but can never be more than just that.