wedrifid is alluding to Popper's notion of falsifiability.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl_Popper http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falsifiability

Note that wedrifid's phrase "that a model could [hypothetically] be surprised by the facts" corresponds to "falsifiability", but EY's phrase "a model is surprised by the facts" actually corresponds better to "falsified".

Popper would say that falsifiability is a good thing and falsified is a bad thing (for models), so both wedrifid and EY are good Popperians.