Piling up facts is not science--science is facts-and-theories. Facts alone have limited use and lack meaning: a valid theory organizes them into far greater usefulness.
A powerful theory not only embraces old facts and new but also discloses unsuspected facts [Heinlein 1980:480-481].
I'm always amused by the twit who thinks I'm giving away the store when I say science is an inventive, creative process that involves imagination.
We seem plagued by folks who think everything can be derived from axioms by deduction or by mathematics.
Here's a similar quote from another fellow...
About thirty years ago there was much talk that geologists ought only to observe and not theorise; and I well remember someone saying that at this rate a man might as well go into a gravel-pit and count the pebbles and describe the colours. How odd it is that anyone should not see that all observation must be for or against some view if it is to be of any service.
~ Charles Darwin, letter to Henry Fawcett, 18 September 1861