I don't see an issue with having a data collection and data engineering function that operates separately from those scientists who are creating hypotheses and then they can search data catalogs and libraries to serve their hypotheses no? It seems the author has mistaken the ability to collect and process data with running an experiment. Further, does cross validation not apply in the sciences? Does sample size not apply? In the apocryphal example given in the story, wouldn't a study get tossed for if it used a sample size of 8 data points to begin with? And wouldn't it be really really stupid for scientists attempting to reproduce the study to go and reuse the same 8 samples?