Some of the best science has come out of the engineering industry, actually, and this is widely recognized (look at how many nobel prizes in physics were awarded to people who did work in the electronics industry; the 1956 prize for transistors stands out in particular).
In industry the stakes are higher and there is a higher penalty for being wrong about the world. This drives a lot of good science.
Science is not particularly reliable.
And yet, we have remarkable technology, and can do medical marvels.
My tentative theory is that there's a lot of knowledge that's less formal than science in engineering, manufacturing, and the practice of medicine which makes it possible to get work done, and some fairly effective methods of filtering information that comes from science.