There's a David Foster Wallace short story on this subject. It's called "Mister Squishy". Here's an especially relevant excerpt from an overview/interpretation of it that I wrote[1]:

Now it seems that the purpose of the focus group, rather than gathering information about consumer response to the snack-cake, is to improve the design of future focus groups. Schmidt, however, informs the reader through glimpses we are given to his thoughts during the session, that the focus groups have no material impact: rather than using the collected data to make inferences about consumer preferences, it is desirable to end with a nebulous analysis which could conclude one outcome or another based on which direction the client company is already planning on moving in: the focus groups can only confirm a decision which has already been made: a deviation on this will result in the termination of the marketing firm.

[1] http://westoncb.blogspot.com/2012/12/interpretation-of-david...

I'm reminded of this The Thick of It quote:

"The thing is, you’ve been listening to the wrong expert. You need to listen to the right expert. And you need to know what an expert is going to advise you before he advises you."

Which is about politics, but I think high level business decisions are often as political as anything else.

Humans seem to be comforted when there's an explanation for something, even if it's just plain wrong, it seems we don't care that much.

Science still carries significant cultural cachet. It may be the only remaining sources of authority that does. How much longer that cachet can be abused before it is lost is a concern of mine. The replication crisis and general low quality of academic journal articles are especially worrisome in this regard.