If the facts don't fit the theory, change the facts

[Nephyte]

I would guess off the top of my head he meant something like.

I have come up with a new Theory.

However, all the facts as we know them currently, or have observed through testing do not support my theory.

So therefore, I must come up with new experiments that will be able to be observed to fir the theory's framework.


Is that not afterall how Theory and scientific knowledge advances. We propose hypothesis and then test them and sometimes they challenge the current body of scientific knowledge?

 

[Moonbear]

Just for fun, I would like to point out there is a valid interpretation of the quote.

Many (most? all?) facts about the physical world are synthetic -- raw sensory data gets processed¹ by the nervous system, and then reprocessed by our understanding of the physical world. For example, take the rather innocuous statement "the sun rose last morning" takes for granted things like the existence of the 'sun' as an object, a duration of 'time' called 'morning', a quality of 'motion' that can be called 'rising', the reliability of our methods for making that observation...

Sometimes, when synthesizing a fact, we presume too much...



1: And, of course, even this statement makes a lot of presumptions

To maintain scientific rigor, more appropriate than saying to change the facts would be to say to reexamine the facts...and in particular, the data collection methods. Indeed, sometimes unintentional bias gets included in the design or interpretation of an experiment, and when the results are what were expected at a particular time, nobody may question whether the instrument was actually working right that day.