[Kamq]

Oh come on. They're obviously using the word "science" in this context as a shorthand for the institutions and processes we've set up to do research. Mostly because that's too many words for a title and nobody has come up with a catchy name that's not politically coded. It's also pretty normal usage of the word out in the wild.

[rramadass]

What Smolin is trying to point out are the meta principles which underlie the feedback loop of the Scientific Method itself. Once the principles are adhered to, the loop becomes commonsense. This is because all of "doing Science" are human activities where we discover knowledge through three means viz. 1) Authority(Textual/Oral) 2) Reasoning 3) Experience. All three have to be considered to come to a definite conclusion. The submitted article ignores this trifecta and seems to conflate "Empiricism" solely with external validation.