I went through the physics program at the university of Minnesota and the point at which the rigorous nature of the scientific process really hit home for me was when I successfully reproduced the results of the famous Milikan Oil Drop experiment for measuring the fundamental charge e and having my professor tell me that even that experiment had controversy over whether Milikin was "picking bubbles" with bias. Real science is hardcore; you better have phenomenal data and explain every potential source of errors and what exatly those error margins are.