Of course you can. The crucial distinction is not about actual chronology, but rather about your state of mind. The scientific method is about predicting the outcomes of experiments, natural or artificial ones. It works just as well regardless of whether the thing you are trying to predict happened in the past or is yet to happen.

Otherwise, the whole field of astronomy wouldn’t be possible, as it by its nature is all about observing the past, and building models to explain and predict other events that happened in the past. If you grant that astronomy is a scientifically sound pursuit, why is astronomy observing and testing their theories on events that happened thousands or millions year ago in another galaxy fine, but observing and testing econometric theories on events that happened hundreds or thousands years ago make no sense? How is archeology, or ancient population genetics supposed to work, if you only allow scientific method to be applied to future events?