The methodology actually proposed by Bacon basically consisted of clearing your mind of preconceptions (he spent a long time on the classification of various sorts of potentially misleading preconceptions), observing stuff (either as it occurs naturally, or in experimental situations), making long lists of what you observed, and organizing those lists according to principles that Bacon outlined. He thought that an understanding of nature’s laws would emerge from this activity of observation and organization of observations. This bears little resemblance to what is commonly touted these days as “the scientific method,” i.e., the hypothetico-deductive method, or falsificationism. This, roughly, consists in thinking up a testable hypothesis, testing it experimentally, and, according to your test results, accepting the hypothesis or else rejecting it and starting again. (In fact, neither of these methodological prescriptions describe terribly well what most scientists actually do most of the time. Reality is a lot more complicated and nuanced.)
The popularity of the notion that hypothetico-deductive falsificationism is the scientific method, owes a great deal to the 20th century philosopher of science Karl Popper – who had a considerable influence on the thinking of many actual scientists. Popper always presented himself as a radical opponent of Bacon. He thought Bacon had got the scientific method badly wrong, and that no end of harm had been done thereby. For one thing, he basically blamed Bacon for the rise of Communism, as well as the popularity of both Freudian-style Psychoanalysis (which Popper thought was pernicious nonsense) and astrology.
However, although the details of the methodology proposed by Bacon only bears a tenuous relationship to actual scientific practice, Bacon’s writings did do a lot to promote the rise of modern science, particularly in England (where a good proportion of the key developments occurred). Setting aside the details, the Baconian method reduced to a bumper sticker was something like “Rely on what you can observe with your senses, not the theories found in old books,” and this was a useful and salutary admonition in the intellectual climate of the time (although it is very far from adequate as a real methodology). In England in particular, paying lip service (probably with varying degrees of sincerity) to the influence that Bacon had had upon you became a way of aligning yourself with the emerging new science, and expressing your rejection of older ways of thinking about the natural world, such as Aristotelian natural philosophy or Hermetic magical theories (as well as of the much more modern theories of Descartes, then popular in continental Europe, and which also, in fact, contributed a lot to what became modern science). The Royal Society, which became the key institution for the promotion of the new scientific ideas and methods in England through the 17th and 18th centuries (and is still today quite an important scientific organization), went out of its way to announce that it was founded on the philosophy of Bacon, as did individual scientific pioneers, such as Robert Boyle and Isaac Newton. As Newtonian science spread to other countries, so did the habit of paying lip service to Bacon’s influence (probably often by people who had never actually read many or even any of his works).
So yes, Bacon, as a philosopher of science and, perhaps more importantly, a cheerleader for science before much real science existed, played an important role in the rise of modern science. However, the actual methodology he proposed is quite at odds with what a lot of people today say is the scientific method, and bears only a very loose and general resemblance to the research strategies actually used by real, successful scientists (either today, or during the time of the Scientific Revolution that he helped to inspire).
