the reaction and more especially pervasive ignorance of the epistemology under-girds "truth-seeking" activities in their discipline recalls the prescient quip"

"Ask a scientist what he conceives the scientific method to be and he will adopt an expression that is at once solemn and shifty-eyed: solemn, because he feels he ought to declare an opinion; shifty-eyed, because he is wondering how to conceal the fact that he has no opinion to declare."

Medawar, P. 1969. Induction and Intuition in Scientific Thought. London. (p. 11)

There are remedies, of course. One that is by no means restricted to ecology is the excellent overview:

Pickett, S.T.A., Kolasa, J. and Jones, C., 2007. Ecological Understanding: The nature of theory and the theory of nature. Second Edition. Academic Press, U.S.A., 233pp.