Bell's theorem - for or against Hidden Variables?

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Well, no, I'm not a popperian, although he was right pretty often. (BTW, are those who follow Joy Christian Christianians? ;-) He defeated the logical positivists, but that's pretty easy. His mistake was to de-emphasize verifiability, equally important as falsifiability. The one thing I really admire about Popper, everyone who met him dislked him - that takes real talent.

If anything I'm a Baconian: science without experiment (or, at least, observation) is not science, but (at best) philosophy. In spite of Sean Carroll, Lubos Motl, and such anti-data-ists.

TR wrote: Observations made in the absence of theory aren't meaningful

Observations without theory certainly are meaningful. Theory is vastly over-rated. Given the observations, anyone who's competent can figure out the theory (don't believe the propaganda). Given just the theory - without observations, and experiment - you have a bunch of nothing. Geniuses are a dime a dozen. Experimental data, OTOH, can cost billions and requires really unusual ability.

Of course few people agree with me! That's alright, not worth arguing about.

TR wrote: In Popper's philosophy, nothing is ever over and done (his autobiography is titled Unended Quest).  It insults science, in my opinion, to think the contrary.

That's right.

TR wrote: Fact is, that Bell’s theorem rests on no foundation except philosophy. So let’s get that out of the way

There's more to Bell than philosophy, but admittedly there's a fair amount of that. If you want, we can analyze it from that point of view.