I agree with you on one level - the difference in rigour I perceive is a function of surrounding culture in a field, not the specific people who are in it. On t

I agree with you on one level - the difference in rigour I perceive is a function of surrounding culture in a field, not the specific people who are in it. On the other hand if you look at the confidence levels required to publish something as a discovery, they're much higher in physics, partly that's fundamental to the field and partly it's that in physics scientists are OK with statements like "to make the next discovery we must spend 10 years building a billion dollar machine that will require international cooperation on a scale never seen before". Whereas in most other fields their ambition stops with collecting a bunch of grad students, or downloading data from sources that wasn't meant for the purpose to which it's put.