In science it kind of does. Scientific theories have descriptive, predictive and explanatory power. If something explains a lot of our observations, it ‘works well’ because it has descriptive power. If it makes testable predictions that have not been falisifed with evidence (I know, others, Popper is not everything…), it is ‘productive’ in terms of generating new scientific inquiries. And if it offers explanations for the phenomena it describes and predicts, it works well and is productive.
I’m not sure how ‘strongest’ and ‘best’ could be defined differently for scientific theories. Do you have an approach to suggest?