The OP makes a fundamental error:<p><i>Traditionally, economists have put the facts in a subordinate role and theory in the driver’s seat. Plausible-sounding theories are believed to be true unless proven false, while empirical facts are often dismissed</i><p>The error is the assumption that facts are, well, facts. In real life, it&#x27;s not nearly so black-and-white. Remember back in high school physics, when we did experiments with Newtonian physics, but our answers never <i>quite</i> worked with the theory - not just because of Einstein, but mostly because of (a) measurement error and (b) we were (knowingly or not) assuming point-masses on frictionless planes, etc.<p>As long as we were willing to write off our errors against those two sources, we could never <i>discover</i> that Newton&#x27;s theories were incomplete, and we needed relativity to explain differences. We only got to that conclusion via models.<p>The way that you choose to measure fundamentally drives what your measurements are. And you can only decide what and how to measure if you start off with <i>some</i> model of the world.