Science is a search for truth and fact but it is performed and funded by humans and institutions.

We could spin up a theorem generator that just starts from mathematical axioms and exhaustively recombines them to create theorem after theorem. This would create facts, but the process would be almost entirely useless. A pure undirected "search for truth and fact" does very little for us.

Researchers decide what problems to tackle. Funding organizations decide what research to fund. Researchers make choices about how to tackle these problems. Research labs are staffed depending on things like admission decisions and immigration decisions. Journals decide what papers to publish, not just on validity but on impact and novelty. Journals then charge money to access this research as part of a profit-driven business model.

All of these human elements bend the "search for truth" and a failure to recognize these institutions and their many historical analogues just means that you miss out on some rather important understanding when interacting with the literature.

I still feel the ideal should be a search for truth, even if human institutions do the work. I'm a fan of Feynman's stuff:

>...As a matter of fact, I can also define science another way: Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts. When someone says, "Science teaches such and such," he is using the word incorrectly.

>Science doesn't teach anything; experience teaches it. If they say to you, "Science has shown such and such," you might ask, "How does science show it? How did the scientists find out? How? What? Where?"

>It should not be "science has shown" but "this experiment, this effect, has shown." And you have as much right as anyone else, upon hearing about the experiments--but be patient and listen to all the evidence--to judge whether a sensible conclusion has been arrived at. https://feynman.com/science/what-is-science/

I always took that for granted but seems some don't.