Epistemology knocked

According to John Radford (Letters, 11 February), "science is based on objective, public, replicable observations yielding testable conclusions". In fact, it is based only on what we know, understand and believe today. I have a friend who recently retired as a medical doctor. He will openly confess that large amounts of the science that he was taught at university have been shown to be false. It was a "fact" in history that the Earth was flat until someone proved otherwise. Science has no more of a monopoly on truth than other disciplines.

Allan Ashworth, Visiting professor, University of Salford.