I mean, Darwin had to see the weird finches before he saw a need for a new theory to explain them. Newton had to get hit by the apocryphal apple. Plank et. al. needed to be bothered by all those funny lines in spectra.
Fitting theory to observation is how science is *supposed* to work, 99% of the time. The reason we get fooled into thinking otherwise is that we tend to celebrate ab initio theories as the work of genius (really relativity specifically). But normal science is about finding something that doesn't make sense and making sense of it.
Of course, after that, when you have a promising theory, you then start trying to make other predictions to show your theory isn't just an overfit model. And clearly that hasn't happened yet here, so we should apply a little salt.
But I see nothing wrong with the process here at all.
I mean, Darwin had to see the weird finches before he saw a need for a new theory to explain them. Newton had to get hit by the apocryphal apple. Plank et. al. needed to be bothered by all those funny lines in spectra.
Fitting theory to observation is how science is *supposed* to work, 99% of the time. The reason we get fooled into thinking otherwise is that we tend to celebrate ab initio theories as the work of genius (really relativity specifically). But normal science is about finding something that doesn't make sense and making sense of it.
Of course, after that, when you have a promising theory, you then start trying to make other predictions to show your theory isn't just an overfit model. And clearly that hasn't happened yet here, so we should apply a little salt.
But I see nothing wrong with the process here at all.