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|Description=Specifically, in contemporary scientific communities, "we do not reject our accepted empirical theories even when these theories face anomalies (counterexamples, disconfirming instances, unexplained results of observations and experiments)." [[CiteRef::Barseghyan (2015)|p.122-3]] This is known as anomaly-tolerance and is by no means a new feature of science. ; in fact, Barseghyan (2015) observes that "this anomaly-tolerance has been a feature of empirical science for a long time" and provides the following key examples of anomaly-tolerance in the context of Newtonian theory. [[CiteRef::Barseghyan (2015)|p.123]]

This wasn’t the first time that the Newtonian theory faced anomalies. In 1750 it was believed that the Earth is an oblate-spheroid (i.e. that it is flattened at the poles). This was a prediction that followed from the then-accepted Newtonian theory, a prediction that had been confirmed by Maupertuis and his colleagues by 1740. However, soon very puzzling results came from the Cape of Good Hope: the measurements of Nicolas Louis de Lacaille were suggesting that, unlike the northern hemisphere, the southern hemisphere is prolate rather than oblate.270 [[CiteRef::Evans(1967); Evans(1992)]]Thus, the Earth was turning out to be pear-shaped! Obviously, the length of the degree of the meridian measured by Lacaille was an anomaly for the accepted oblate-spheroid view and, correspondingly, for the Newtonian theory. Of course, as with any anomaly, this one too forced the community to look for its explanation by rechecking the data, by remeasuring the arc, and by providing additional assumptions. Although it took another eighty years until the puzzle was solved, Lacaille’s anomalous results didn’t lead to the rejection of the then-accepted oblate-spheroid view. Finally, in 1834-38, Thomas Maclear repeated Lacaille’s measurements and established that the deviation of Lacaille’s results from the oblate-spheroid view were due to the gravitational attraction of Table Mountain.271 The treatment of Lacaille’s results – as something bothersome but not lethal – reveals the anomaly-tolerance of empirical science even in the 18th century.</blockquote>