Question: Do you favour more scientific theory or facts?

Richard Fielder answered on 8 Oct 2020:

There’s no way to separate the two. The process of science is actually quite simple:
1) Observe something that happens in the real world;
2) Come up with an idea to explain how and why it happens;
3) Predict what else you expect to see because of that idea;
4) Make more observations to see if your prediction was correct;
5) GOTO 1)
So both theory and facts are fundamental parts of the scientific method. If you ignore either one, you’re not doing science at all. Theory has to be validated by observations, otherwise you’re just doing philosophy. But facts on their own are useless if you never try to understand why they are what they are.
Of course, different scientists might focus on different parts more than others. Many fields of science are big and complicated enough that one person might spend their whole career working on a theory, while another can spend years trying to make just one good measurement. But that doesn’t mean either of them consider theory or fact more important, it’s just that science as a whole is very big, long term, collaborative process, so you often need lots of people working over long periods to cover every step of the scientific process between them.