Believe it or not, this conflict plagues even real science. In physics (and probably most other hard sciences as well), there is actually a fairly sizable rift

Believe it or not, this conflict plagues even real science. In physics (and probably most other hard sciences as well), there is actually a fairly sizable rift between theorists and experimentalists. If you're a theorist, you can deal in idealized systems. You can dream up an experiment with a perfect component X in it and work out what theory says should be the result. In a morning you can create a dazzlingly complex theory that would take billions of dollars and thousands of man-years to test, calculate the theoretical result on a napkin over lunch, and then move on to something completely different in the afternoon. Experimentalists look at such complex theories and immediately give up. They're not interested in such theories because nobody will ever pony up the cash to test 99.999999% of them. Experimentalists like things nice and simple. They'll pick an experiment that looks dead-easy to test, spend thousands of dollars on a component Y that can't do X worth a darn until they find a way to jury rig it to sort-of do X a little bit on good day if the stars align just right. They'll spend six months sorting out the bugs in the experiment and, in most cases, find it matches the theory pretty well. Then they'll submit a paper to a journal which will send it out to referees. Frequently, one of those referees will be a theorist who will say, "Why did you bother doing something so simple when the theory is so clear?" (Some theorists do not appreciate that theories are occasionally wrong, and this is the whole point of actually doing experiments!) Of course, experimentalists and theorists need each other desperately and frequently work together closely. It's just a little frustrating at times and hysterical at others.