Dave,

a very fine and necessary distinction between facts and theories about facts.

Just one remark:
I know that philosophers of science hate that for it blurs a mostly useful distinction, but sometimes a theory can become a fact when the level of knowledge reaches a new quality. Example: For some decades in the history of science there was a quarrel between two theories explaining why we can see clearly at (mostly) all distances. One theory said it was because of the lens of the eye changing its curvature. The other said because the distance between the lens and the retina was changing. Both theories could explain the observed facts and there was for some time no way to decide between the two theories. Both were theories in the usual sense of the word, for they tried to make sense of the facts and both hypothesized something (changes in the eye) that was not observable at that time. Decades later, new methods made what was before just a theoretical claim observable and from then on what was before a theory (lens changing its curvature) became a fact.

Wolfgang