Some historical examples of responses to a contradiction between a theory and some apparent fact

We have argued that the Alternative View of science is correct: one can never test a single statement in isolation; rather, a test is always a test of the corpus of statements which comprise one’s entire set of beliefs about the world – including the so-called facts (see Hempel, 1966, Chapter 7, pp. 88–90; Hesse, 1974, Chapter 1; Quine, 1951).