They love it even more when they've been proven wrong. Sure, individual scientists may resent that their pet theory is threatened, and that fear will often cloud their judgement, as it does with all of us. But as a group, a strong challenge to the current orthodoxy means the game's afoot, and new opportunities for discovery (and personal fulfillment and professional advancement!) are at hand.

This is something laymen find very difficult to understand; to them, they suspect scientists band together to resist any challenge to the current paradigm. The truth is just the opposite, inconvenient data is welcomed. The opportunity to either debunk or confirm the new findings means fame and fortune.

But the natural conservatism of science also dictates that the new theory, no matter how seductive, must not only explain away the flaws in the old, it also has to agree with the old in those circumstances where it worked.