But when people are looking at N=x, most don't realize that N<30 is usually in a completely different category than N>=30. You almost shouldn't look at it as "N".
Novice "statisticians" are just (very) limited in the tools/formulas/methods available to use, because so many (entry level/basic/standard) statistical methods are only valid for normal distributions (or other constraints on data, that people typically don't check for).
Without details stated up-front, most people will (wrongly) assume that a normal distribution automatically applies, even if they don't know what that means. Similar to situations where people ask for the average/mean when they should be asking for the median.
The data isn't useless, but needs strong context and disclaimers.