  The issue of the approximate isotropy and homogeneity of the observable
universe is one of the major topics in modern Cosmology: the common use of the
Friedmann-Robertson-Walker [FWR] metric relies on these assumptions. Therefore,
results conflicting with the ``canonical'' picture would be of the utmost
importance. In a number of recent papers it has been suggested that strong
evidence of a fractal distribution with dimension D~2 exists in several
samples, including Abell clusters [ACO] and galaxies from the ESO Slice Project
redshift survey [ESP].Here we report the results of an independent analysis of
the radial density run,N(<R)~R^D, of the ESP and ACO data.
  For the ESP data the situation is such that the explored volume, albeit
reasonably deep, is still influenced by the presence of large structures.
Moreover, the depth of the ESP survey (z<0.2) is such to cause noticeable
effects according to different choices of k-corrections, and this adds some
additional uncertainty in the results. However, we find that for a variety of
volume limited samples the dimensionality of the ESP sample is D~3, and the
value $D = 2$ is always excluded at the level of at least five (bootstrap)
standard deviations. The only way in which we reproduce D~2 is by both
unphysically ignoring the galaxy k-correction and using Euclidean rather than
FRW cosmological distances.
  In the cluster case the problems related to the choice of metrics and
k-correction are much lessened, and we find that ACO clusters have D_{ACO} =
3.07 +- 0.18 and D_{ACO} = 2.93 +- 0.15 for richness class R \geq 1 and R \geq
0, respectively. Therefore D=2 is excluded with high significance also for the
cluster data.
