If this is a common view of science as a discipline, or a true reflection of the way it is being taught, our country is in big trouble. Your confusion between units of time and units of distance may reflect the issues with science, but hopefully it is a simple typo.
In any case, your characterization of science is exactly the opposite of what the scientific method is, and this method is practiced all over the world by thousands of dedicated folks who understand the difference between dogma and evidence-based inquiry. Our cushy lives and technological miracles are the result of the thousands and thousands of things that science got right after many iterations of the hypothesis>prediction>test cycle. If you introduce dogma in that process, progress stops. I loved the attitudes of some of the top level scientists when the LHC was coming online to search for the Higgs... many said it would be far more interesting if the Higgs were not found because that would require a whole new direction for theoretical physics. They were excited by the prospect of this long-held cornerstone prediction being wrong. That is a true scientific attitude.
With some hesitation to introduce politics, I note that your source is Fox news, and while I won't quibble with the basic information in this article, the tone of the post is reflective of the general biases inherent to that media outlet.