Science and empiricism usually eventually wins out over the long term but thankfully for human civilisation, people have been able to achieve extremely good outcomes in things with very loose models and folk wisdom - for instance sports people don't need to understand physics to "Bend it like Beckham"

In cooking, the folklore knew that salting your egg mix before beating an omelette long before Chemistry could catch up and explain it. In the meantime all the cynics were making worse omelettes