Science has grown more than exponentially since the 1600s, but the basic idea has remained the same: scientific ideas must be supported by evidence and subject to acceptance, or rejected. The evidence could be experimental or observational; it could be a logical argument or a theoretical proof. But whatever the body of evidence is, both the idea and the evidence used to support it must be judged by a jury of one's scientific peers. Until a claim passes that judgment —that peer review—it is only that, just a claim. What counts as knowledge are the ideas that are accepted by the fellowship of experts (which is why members of these societies are often called "fellows"). Conversely, if the claim is rejected, the honest scientist is expected to accept that judgment, and move on to other things. In science, you don't get to keep harping on a subject until your opponents just give up in exhaustion.