Science Today

The below quote if from Ernest Lawrence who among other things won the 1939 Nobel Prize in physics and founded the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory:

In scientific work, creative thinking demands seeing things not seen previously, or in ways not previously imagined; and this necessitates jumping off from "normal" positions, and taking risks by departing from reality. The difference between the thinking of the paranoid patient and the scientist comes from the latter's ability and willingness to test out his fantasies or grandiose conceptualizations through the systems of checks and balances science has established - and give up those schemes that are shown not to be valid on the basis of these scientific checks. - Ernest Lawrence

It could be argued that today these checks and balances in science have been mostly removed or neutered. So what then becomes the difference between the scientist and the paranoid patient? This is how we wind up with String Theory dominating physics and in medicine medical cures whose side effects are worse than the ailment they are trying to cure. 

Crazy!