Assuming, as the lay scientific rhetoric often positions, that one of the two sides is full of shit! In real scientific debate, the two sides are actually like

Assuming, as the lay scientific rhetoric often positions, that one of the two sides is full of shit! In real scientific debate, the two sides are actually likely to be sharing an enormous amount of common ground and quibbling over extraordinarily specific details. The trick is that sometimes these specific details have an enormous impact (bistability). It doesn't suddenly mean that one side is full of shit just because the world might change dramatically depending on how that tiny detail changes.