I like the characterization and the premise but I completely disagree with the conclusion. To an academic, science may feel like a strong-link problem but from a layperson's pov it's the opposite. When bad science is translated into the real world, it turns into faulty engineering, bad medical interventions, terrible socioeconomic policies etc. The difficulty is that once bad science is out, it can take years/decades before it can be corrected. This is because science is thought to be our best way to get to an objective truth. This why bad science, when it goes out into the real world turns into "objective truth". Think about the "vaccines are bad for you" crap and the damage that one weak link that got out caused. Several of our modern problems are due to weak science making it out into the world and getting recognizing as "objective truth" because it came via scientific method.
The OP is right that in the long run science is self-correcting by its very nature. Over those timescales, half a generation or so only the good stuff stands the test of time. But over short timescales bad science making its way out into the world can wreak havok.
You hit the nail on the head. But maybe this is only true for current society who is in love with a deformed image of what science really is. If you decouple science from applied crafts by having a more conservative society who is skeptic by default of anything new we can keep engineering, medicine and policies weak-link and science hard-link.
This is an illuminating point of view. Science is weak-link on its output, because of the downstream damage it can do. But article's claim still holds on the input side of science - sorting ideas for funding and perhaps publishing early results with a disclaimer. That's a strong-link problem, where you want to consider impact times reliability rather than just reliability alone.
The OP is right that in the long run science is self-correcting by its very nature. Over those timescales, half a generation or so only the good stuff stands the test of time. But over short timescales bad science making its way out into the world can wreak havok.