The scientific method was no more than being open-minded, doubting everything, stating all claims to truth as hypotheses, trying to disprove them, and accepting the ones that survived this process as tentative truths. According to this falsificationist theory of science, science falsified theories according to available facts. According to this paradigmatic theory of science, science was affected by the values of its paradigmatic perspective that colored all it did and could never be said to be an activity where independent, object facts proved or disproved theories. Good research needs to be sensitive to how paradigms color perspective, frame research, lead values to influence what we take to be fact, and lead us to produce less than perfect truth. We therefore need to be sensitive to how in research it is unavoidable that values will affect facts.
Values are subjective preferences often implying what is right or wrong.
Facts are objective information about the world. We probably never get to know facts in their pure form. Personal values as well as paradigm values lead us to consciously as well as unconsciously construct a partial view of the world. Values affect research in a variety of ways starting with how we frame a research problem. We need to be sensitive to how biases in our perspective of a problem affect how we develop a research focus, phrase a research question.