"A blank check....failure is success, lies are the truth."
Actually, what the guy you completely misrepresented was trying to get across was that science, honest almost to a fault, is self-correcting and ever eager to supersede one theory with a simpler, more general one. There's an obvious and important distinction between saying at each discovery "previously lies, but now the truth" and "previously 90% accurate, now 95%".
It may have been put better by Asimov in "The Relativity of Wrong". Quote:
"[...] when people thought the earth was flat, they were wrong. When people thought the earth was spherical, they were wrong. But if you think that thinking the earth is spherical is just as wrong as thinking the earth is flat, then your view is wronger than both of them put together."
The basic trouble, you see, is that people think that "right" and "wrong" are absolute; that everything that isn't perfectly and completely right is totally and equally wrong.
However, I don't think that's so.
"What you're saying is that.....science is always absolutely true and correct."
No, it's the best there is. The best turns out to be provisional and ever-improving.
