Answers (1)
It is very hard to give general advice because it depends on what science, what community, and what words. Everything we know about astronomy comes from looking, but there are astronomers who claim to know about things that can not be seen. They control the grant funds, so you just have to be careful not to discover anything that upsets them unless you have some other means of support. The same situation exists in biology. In archaeology it used to be forbidden to discover evidence of human life in the Americas prior to 9,000 years ago. Students would dig to the 9,000 year level and stop because they were not allowed to discover anything below that. That restriction is no longer enforced. In chemistry you can get into trouble presenting your findings to businessmen because the words have different meanings. For instance, "sublimate" means stuff that sticks to a filter, but to a businessman with training in psychology it means a lousy substitute for what you really want.