Can Evidence Support a Theory?

A strict-pauperian answer to that question is almost always no, because it's impossible to support any theory. If a fact is compatible with two different theories and no theories or if those theories are contrary to each other, how does it even make sense to say that the fact supports one of them and not the other? Yet if you say it supports both, you're admitting that support points in mutually exclusive directions,. As Miller and Popper say, support, though it may certainly exist, points in all directions at once and therefore points usefully in no direction.