As a corollary, there are unhappy accidents, and with respect to life forms in a chaotic system, such accidents can perpetuate and endure without human recognition.

"Scientists publish papers not because the paper is the end of science, but because it is a unit of research that is valuable to share with others so that others can use this brick of knowledge and either build with it… or find its weakness and break it down...We wrote our entire analysis in R and shared our code with the world. I tried SO hard to check every single line of code and make our pipeline clear & easy to reproduce. However, despite nearly giving myself stomach ulcers checking every line and stressing about these findings, it’s possible someone finds a mistake in our work. We don’t share this work happily - this is the saddest paper I’ve ever written. We’ve shared our code precisely for that reason: we want you to see exactly what we’ve done, and if we’ve done something wrong we are open to hearing it."

As to your original concern, it is a valid one. I wrote this is response to pre-prints popularized via the press earlier this year:

-> Make bold, unjustifiable claims in the preprint; -> Ensure widespread coverage in the science press; -> Walk back those claims during peer-review; -> Get published; and then -> Watch blue checks tout original claims as "Fact!"