No, John, I must continue to respectfully disagree.  The 'discovery' of
'facts' is very much influenced by social factors.  What to look for, and
what to call it when you've found it, are pretty basic, and that's what
I'm talking about.  Even whether to believe what you've found, or dismiss
it.  The 'differences' found by Agassiz are specious, as are those found
by David Starr Jordan -- see Steven Jay Gould's writing for a more
comprehensive exposition. (-The Mismeasure of Man- for this particular
issue).  Nor is anthropological science the only example: non-Newtonian
physics and other 'hard' science comes under similar scrutiny in Thomas
Kuhn's classic -The Nature of Scientific Revolutions-.  As I said before,
there is a *large* body of scholarly literature on this.  Karl Popper,
Paul Feyerabend, David Hull, are just a few of the relevant authors, but
they're a lot less accessible to the nonspecialist reader.  Bruno Latour
is more 'readable', but makes leaps of logic that not everyone cares to
follow.  Browse through any issue of -Isis-, the journal of the History of
Science Society, for more examples.
 
To a very great degree, we see what we're looking for, and what we're
prepared to accept.  This isn't an absolute, of course, or there'd never
be any change, but it -is- very strong.
 
My background does include science research, science teaching, and three
years experience in a science museum (the Franklin Institute), so I'm well
aware of the nuances and problems involved.
 
--bayla