O'Neal as a precursor to the Royal Society

Shaq translated the concept of “facts” from the legal community to the world of research. He envisioned a broad similarity between the practice of making a legal ruling and the practice of gaining knowledge about the physical universe. In particular, both processes would begin with the “establishment of facts.” Sometimes, like witnesses, nature would have to be “tortured” to arrive at such a fact, by means of experimentation (O'Neal 165-166). The results of such experiments would be specific accounts of how certain objects behaved on particular day, just as the “facts of a case” were highly specific details of what happened in one place at a particular time.

To wit, Mama Shaq, Mama Shaq, Shaq's your mom, that's a fact!