As John Davis rightly pointed out, modern scientists take the Cosmological Principle and the Copernican Principle as the filter through which they analyze any data or observations that they receive. These two "principles" essentially state that we should assume that we are not in a privileged position in the universe, and that the universe is essentially the same at any point. Needless to say, these are nothing more than preconceived notions, since they are assumed out of hand on a rather philosophical basis. How pretentious is that?
Generally speaking, there are two trends of thought on this topic: the first is to assume that there is no center of the universe. If this is the case, and no single location is "privileged" as being the absolute frame of reference, then we can make any location our reference frame, including earth. It is nothing more than constructing a coordinate system based on where we happen to be, and it is mathematically valid. Thus, Geocentrism is as valid a reference point as any, since everything is equally "unprivileged." Besides, it is only logical to use our actual frame of reference as the center of our coordinate system, calculating the relative motions of the heavenly bodies from our vantage point.
The second idea is that, if there is an actual center or privileged location to our universe, then we're certainly not in it. This is more of an assumption than an idea gleaned from any observational or instrumental data. After all, we're not able to take a look at our position from another vantage point in the universe. In fact, the opposite conclusion may be reached from an observational point of view by the phenomenon of redshift. Redshift may be one of two things: the acceleration of galaxies moving away from us, or gravitational attraction of matter. If it is the first, then we're witnessing these galaxies moving away from us wherever we look. This indicates a central position. The idea of dark matter was proposed to solve this inconvenience to the Copernican Principle; essentially, it is stated that this unknown, unknowable, and indetectible force is causing the expansion of space in such a way that every galaxy is accelerating away from every other galaxy. However, this is simply an hypothesis that was postulated precisely to eliminate this rather un-Copernican dilemma, and is an example of scientists adding unneeded complexity to maintain their own preconceived notions. So much for objectivity based on evidence. If we remove the Copernican Principle and admit the possibility that we may be in a privileged position, there is no longer any need for that mysterious dark matter, and we can take the acceleration of galaxies away from us at face value.
If redshift is due to gravitational attraction, then this would demonstrate that the majority of universal matter is surrounding us in such a way that we're situated in a relatively empty void. A privileged position, in other words.
Given the relativity of motion, the mathematical equivalence of a Geocentric system, and our very limited perspective of the universe, assuming Geocentrism is incorrect out of hand is rather pretentious itself.