As the Rabbi notes, this is not necessarily an “error.” After all, the Sages ruled according to the agronomic experience they had. But it is certainly a Jewish law that was formulated on the basis of much more limited information than ours, and that is why only a few parameters were taken into account, whereas today we can compare and get into many more nuances. This is similar to the rules of mixtures: a secondary vessel, how a fatty substance spreads upward, and so on. The question is whether only in a case where a scientific error was discovered in the Jewish law should we void it, or whether even when there is no error we should sharpen its definitions in light of newly available information. Why should we accept דווקא the definitions established by the Sages? (Someone argued to me that since Jewish law is determined according to human reality and not scientific reality, there is an advantage specifically to the Sages’ determinations, since they were set in light of human experience and not scientific discoveries. Today it is hard for us to define what counts as human knowledge and what counts as scientific knowledge, but I am not convinced by this, because the Sages too ruled according to the information that emerged from their experience.)

My claim is simpler. The Talmud has authority like the Sanhedrin. In order to change a Talmudic law without a Sanhedrin, you have to be sure that it is mistaken, because otherwise we enter the topic of “a matter established by a formal count requires another formal count to permit it.” When the degree of nourishment-drawing is not measurable, and it is not clear what degree is determinative for the prohibition, you cannot clearly establish that the Talmudic law is mistaken, and therefore you cannot void it. Clearly, if we were determining the Jewish law today, it is possible that it would be established differently. But that is not the situation.

If so, from where do we get the authority to void laws that turn out to be incorrect? After all, that is how the Sanhedrin interpreted it, and we have no power to change it. I can understand that if they erred about something that could have been known in their time, then it is an error and their decision has no force. But if this was apparently a correct determination relative to the knowledge available in their time, because that was the worldview of the reasonable person, then their decision has force and we would need another formal count to revoke it.

I don’t see a difference whether that knowledge existed in their time or not. As long as it is clear that this is an error, it is a mistaken ruling and it is void. That’s all.
With voiding a sale or a betrothal, some distinguish between a mistaken transaction based on a lack of information that already existed at the time of the transaction, and voiding by force of an assessment based on information that came into being later (“if I had known this is how it would turn out, I would not have agreed”). But in our case we are talking about knowledge that was true at the time of the “transaction,” except that people did not know it.