I guess they mean stuff like this:

> That the first basic assumption had turned out to be utterly, eye-wateringly wrong should have led to some introspection in cosmology, astronomy, and astrophysics about the validity of the second, and even more fundamental, unexamined assumption. But it didn’t.

Because it sort of implies that the original scientists coming up with these ideas should have been perfect and went about asking questions in the way the author does. (maybe the author doesn't mean it this way, but that's how it came across to me).

It's strange to me, we don't really have a firm understanding of how to define the edge of our understanding of the universe since by definition that understanding is diffuse. So why should people be perfectly exploring that edge? That is why I think it is better to focus on new ideas and what they add as opposed to criticizing old ideas.

For example, the other day I asked a colleague (who i will name Cooper) about if they had heard about another colleague's work (who I will call Audrey) because it sounded like they were working on something similar to me and might benefit from discussing with each other. Cooper said something to the effect of "everything they are doing is wrong and really just not as good as the work I am doing". And it's like, would you say this to Audrey's face? Does this comment make any kind of constructive arguments as to why your work is better than Audrey's? Isn't this rather anti-intellectual since you simply are dismissing Audrey's work instead of engaging them in a discussion? And my initial reaction to hearing that was to be dismissive of Cooper's work because I thought to myself, "what is Cooper defending right now, his work or his ego?"

To me, a primary goal of a scientist is to convince other people of their ideas through evidenced arguments. To me, if Cooper thinks that Audrey could learn something from Cooper's work, then Cooper should assume there is something to learn from Audrey's work. To me, the process they went about understanding the same/similar problems is as interesting as is whatever their solution ends up being. Perhaps Audrey has some reason to have designed her models differently from Cooper's that isn't apparent to Cooper. By dismissing her work, Cooper dismisses the opportunity to learn anything himself from it. There isn't any universal truth that some how elevates an individual above others because they understand Newton's Laws or whatever. There is simply what we personally understand and our desire to understand new things.