Correlation supersedes causation, and science can advance even without coherent models, unified theories, or really any mechanistic explanation at all.

No it can't, because correlation without understanding the relationships that cause the correlation or successfully sifting alternatrives to find the relationship cannot advance science.

I saw a classic example of this at a conference two weeks ago. A research group did multi-variant correlation analysis in relationship to acid groundwater in a particular region. The best correlation was with vegetation, ergo the acidity was caused by the vegetation. They did not consider the opposite possibility, that the acidity was controlling the vegetation.

I have seen this happen time an again when people mine the data without understanding relationships, and think that greater computing power = better science.

Jon