"Granted they could use the data and then somehow make up an excuse for coming up with another reason to observe something but that too would be kinda clunky and obvious and would come up."

It's actually a very common technique known as parallel construction. Apologies in advance if you were being sarcastic; I'm not great at reading tone in comments.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parallel_construction#By_the_U...