I think of facts as hypotheses. I believe a fact is a hypothesis that has a significant amount of data to support it and insufficient data has yet been found to support the null hypothesis (a hypothesis conflicting with the original hypothesis. BUT then this raises a whole host of other considerations - who did the research for the "fact"? how was it done? what was their paradigm? is the data valid and reliable? AND has someone else found equally valid, reliable, and sufficient data to support a conflicting "fact"? What then? And what if none of the researchers (even if you combined them all together) have knowledge of all of the variables affecting any of the hypotheses?