That’s a good (and profound) question, not deserving of downvotes. It turns out that the simplified paradigmatic “scientific method” is a very bad caricature o

That’s a good (and profound) question, not deserving of downvotes. It turns out that the simplified paradigmatic “scientific method” is a very bad caricature of what actually happens on the cutting edge when we’re pushing the boundaries of what we understand (not just theory, but also experimental design). Even on the theoretical front, the principles might be well-understood, but making predictions requires accurately modeling all the aspects that contribute to the actual experimental measurement (and not just the simple principled part). In that sense, the border between theory and experiment is very fuzzy, and the two inevitably end-up influencing each other, and it is fundamentally unavoidable. Unfortunately, it would require more effort on my part to articulate this, and all I can spare right now is a drive-by comment. Steven Weinberg has some very insightful thoughts on the topic, both generally and specifically in the context of particle physics, in his book “Dreams of a final theory” (chapter 5). If you don’t have access to the book, in a pinch, you could peruse some slides that I made for a discussion: https://speakerdeck.com/sivark/walking-through-weinbergs-dreams-of-a-final-theory https://speakerdeck.com/sivark/walking-through-weinbergs-dre...