What Does It Mean for Someone to Do Science?

In the world of mage, what does it mean for someone to do science? Is there fundamentally a sub strait of reality that they are truly investigating. Or is reality merely reflecting back on them their own beliefs? There's a lot of what i would call a sort of great man theory that gets baked into the way that things are talked about. And all the technocracy of books we have, it based on the idea that all those books are also propaganda. While we never lie to the reader, it is always framed as propaganda.