I don’t think the majority of scientists are principled truth seekers or that the average level is necessarily much higher, but I think there’s a higher percentage of individuals who really care about truth. But it seems like those are dropping out quietly:
I think the population of true truth seekers has always been a small and eccentric one:
I don’t think scientists ought to be mystical and irrational. What I think is happening here is just that these great scientists are independent and honest thinkers (when it comes to science at least), which means they are eccentric. Being willing to investigate esoteric ideas can lead to being willing to try out wilder hypotheses.
Having an attitude that reason is effective is necessary for science, otherwise why did science progress so much in the enlightenment and later but not in the dark ages?
The idea that rationality hampers science is based on a wrong conception of what rationality is. For one rationality does not mean ignoring intuition, which Elliot has showed. It also fits in with Popper’s evolutionary epistemology since it says there is no sure method of creating good theories. Instead you need creativity which means being bold and eccentric is good for creating new theories.
It seems Erik Hoel is only aware of Popper as a falsificationist (standard misconceived view of Popper) instead of as a general epistemologist (from the last link):
Attempts to define science as merely an abstract machine for falsification, like Karl Popper did, leads to the problem of exactly how one chooses which hypotheses—of which there are infinite—to try to falsify.