Earlier quoted context omitted.
If they only showed the measures, yes. The meaning of the measures is determined by the experiment, not by the data. "Data" is itself meaningless, and statistics on data is only informative of reality because of how the experimenter creates the measurement-target relationship.
Okay I think I buy that. I don’t know if I agree, but trying to argue for a position against it has been sufficiently illuminating that I just need to chew on it more. There’s no doubt in my mind that experimental learning is more efficient. Especially if you can design the experiments against your personal models at the time. At the same time, it’s not clear to me that one could not gain similar value purely by, say…
You are correct to observe that science, as we know it, is ending. We're way along the sigmoid of what can be known, and soon enough, will be drifting back into medieval heuristics ("this weed seems to treat this disease").
This isnt a matter of efficiency, it's a necessity. Reality is under-determined by measurement; to find out what it is like, we have to have many independent measures whose causal relationship to reality is one we can control (through direct, embodied, action).
If we only have observational measures, we're trapped in a madhouse.
Let's not mistake science for pseudoscience, even if the future is largely now, pseudoscientific trash.