Here, we trace in detail the rise of empiricism, starting with Mill’s cannons of proof, moving to Pearson’s product-moment correlations, and landing at Fisher’s proposal for experiment design. Particular attention is paid to the limitations and logical fallacies inherent to their methods, concluding that, despite their numerous innovations, they have failed to create an inductive method capable of producing fully general knowledge. We argue that the inability to produce cumulative knowledge is a consequence of separating theory from empirical investigation. The chapter concludes with an appeal to ignore the siren’s call of ‘finding the answer’ in data, turning instead to theory building, testing, and application to achieve a deeper scientific understanding.