“What do we hope to accomplish?” asks Stuart Firestein in his interesting 2016 book Failure. I like his answer:

“Science has for the past four or so centuries provided more and better explanations about nature than anything in previous recorded history. Mostly it developed a strategy for finding stuff out and knowing whether to believe it or not.”      

As he says later in the book: “Science is the best method I know for being wary without being paranoid.”