The failure of first-half-of-20th-century-physics was not due to straying from the scientific method. Science and rationality - that is, Science and Bayesianism - aren't the same thing, and sometimes they give different answers.
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Agreed that striving to find simpler theories is, generally speaking, a worthy goal. What I tried to emphasize is that striving to find the simplest one - in the particular Kolmogorov sense - isn't.
Today's post, The Dilemma: Science or Bayes? was originally published on 13 May 2008. A summary (taken from the LW wiki):
Discuss the post here (rather than in the comments to the original post).
This post is part of the Rerunning the Sequences series, where we'll be going through Eliezer Yudkowsky's old posts in order so that people who are interested can (re-)read and discuss them. The previous post was The Failures of Eld Science, and you can use the sequence_reruns tag or rss feed to follow the rest of the series.
Sequence reruns are a community-driven effort. You can participate by re-reading the sequence post, discussing it here, posting the next day's sequence reruns post, or summarizing forthcoming articles on the wiki. Go here for more details, or to have meta discussions about the Rerunning the Sequences series.