[davidivadavid]

While correct you're being downvoted because you're equivocating on the term "theory." People are assuming you're talking about a fully baked, documented theory couched in precise language and equations. What you're actually talking about is tacit assumptions / models that are built in observations.

"Theory comes first" is particularly unfortunate wording because it seems to imply the naive point of view that people first come up with a thorough mathematical model of some phenomenon before testing and validating it with experiments. That's obviously not how science has worked throughout history.

Saying "all observations/measurements imply an underlying theory" would have been maybe more accurate.