[pradocchia]

Right, so you are describing what Kuhn termed the period of "normal science": theory in hand, collect new facts, fit facts to theory, repeat.

HOWEVER, that theory-in-hand rests on an earlier paradigm shift, where previously anomalous observations were re-integrated via some new conceptual framework that better accounted for all observations, not merely the conformed ones that scientists had focused on in the prior period of normal science.

So yeah, perhaps in the day-in, day-out existence of professional scientists, most work is fitting facts to theory. However, that theory exists because facts come first, because at some point in the past, mounting factual evidence overwhelmed the theoretical biases of an earlier generation.

Do I really need to spell this out for the HN crowd? For you, who reference Kuhn?