Well yeah, but rigor is part-of the scientific mindset. One that we now try to enforce with statistics, peer-review, and reproducibility. But those are rather new ideas. Proper based evidence medicine, for example, is something we only came up with in the 60s or so. Rigorous experimental science might produce better insights in some way, because the data is better. But there is still value in other methods. An interesting example here is the advent in genetics for personalized medicine: did it deliver on the promises? No, it's still utter hype and vaporware. Part of the reason, I believe, is that it was merely stamp collecting. Sequence enough, go fishing for correlations, and hope that something useful comes of it. The current hype around CRISPR and related technology? Not because of rigorous scientific testing on large peer-reviewed data sets. Someone, was "merely" curios about bacterial immunological defense mechanisms. Curious enough to try and understand it. It was the explanation that made it worth it. Ideally they go hand in hand, but anyone who has ever been in a scientific institute will agree that this "idealized" view is rarely, if ever, true. An interesting paper about the subject is "you can't play 20 questions with nature and win" by Alan Newell

http://repository.cmu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=3032&c...