1977 study shows that science has always leaned into its rituals:

Experimental results showed that–contrary to a popular assumption–the reasoning skills o f the scientists were not significantly different from those o f nonscientists

he scientists in this study appeared to be strongly inclined toward early speculation with relatively little experimentation … Both of these phenomena–the apparent pen- chant for quick speculation and tenacious fidelity to a hypothesismhave been observed as relatively common phenomena in the scientific culture