Most of the responses to such questions are based upon tradition, or what someone else has told them. Just as with much other English usage, this can and has resulted in some weird conventions. I believe people defer to "we" because it is predominant in modern scientific literature, but only because most articles are the joint work of more than one person.
I think much depends upon the context. If something can be said generally, "we" or "one" seem most appropriate: "One can find many instances of dogmatic conventions in the literature". For a multi author paper it is easy to choose "we" when describing the work or opinions of the authors. But in a single author publication (especially a thesis) it seems perverse to use "we" instead of "I", and can lead to confusion over theythe author's actual contributions.
The one downside is that using "I" can draw attention to the fact that only one person was involved in the work. In many scientific disciplines this is a bit of a red flag: unless the author has a strong reputation, the work of a single person is evidence of insufficient collaboration with other experts.