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I have a serious problem with the essayist's focus on the word "controlled". There has never been, nor ever will be a completely controlled experiment. By definition the only point at which we can have a completely controlled experiment is after we have completely understood all of the possible factors that might affect a particular measurement. But in that case there would be no reason to run the experiment.

I also think the use of the word "science" is misleading. It would be better to use the term "scientific method". Using the word "science" feeds into the idea that "science" is some sort of mystery cult led by mystical geniuses who have access to special knowledge. "Scientific method", on the other hand, emphasizes that what good scientists do is follow a specific methodology to develop equations that will help us predict the future behavior of systems within a reasonable set of limits.

What distinguishes the scientific method from other methods is not that the experiments are controlled, but that when an experiment occurs all of the important factors are well understood. This allows scientists to look at ancient geographic formations and come to scientific conclusions about how those geographic formations arose without having to construct "controlled" mountain building or seismic fault simulating experiments.

Too much silliness is launched at the theory of evolution because it supposedly can't be tested, e.g. we can't breed a race of dinosaurs, hurl a meteor into Earth, and see if they all die after a period of time.

Einstein's theories were proven in part by waiting for a particular astronomical event to occur. This event was not created or controlled by any scientist. What the scientists had was a complete understanding of all of the important factors that might affect their observations. The observations they then made lined up more closely to Einstein's predictions than Newton's.

I agree with the essayist that science is not a search for the truth. It can't be. Philosophers haven't proven much, but everyone agrees that they have clearly shown that no certain truths can come from empirical observations no matter how much clever math and logic follows. Anything that starts with empirical observation can only have about it a tentative possibility of being true.

There's a YouTube video where four different physicists discuss their different takes on the quantum mechanical "measurement problem". Although they disagree about how to resolve the problem, they all agree that science has nothing to say about what "is", but only about what changes might occur at some time 't' in the future given a well-specified initial state and a fully fleshed out hypothesis.

I'm also not a big fan of folks who take a dig into Aristotle. He was a big fan of empirical observation which is not a minor point. Many of his observations on other philosophic topics have stood the test of time. He was also a big fan of the Socratic method where all theories were open to continuous questioning. Aristotle would have been the first one to question his own proto-scientific writings given the increasing amount of empirical evidence. It's not Aristotle's fault that generations of intelligentsia treated him like a god rather than as a colleague, i.e. the way Aristotle treated Plato.