If you want to be that broad about it, science journals publish a lot more than just method development, including obituaries and opinion pieces on where funding should be directed.
Here's a famous paper showing that "Euler's conjecture on sums of like powers" is incorrect - https://www.ams.org/journals/bull/1966-72-06/S0002-9904-1966... . I will repeat the body in full:
> A direct search on the CDC 6600 yielded 27⁵ + 84⁵ + 110⁵ + 133⁵ = 144⁵ as the smallest instance in which four fifth powers sum to a fifth power. This is a counterexample to a conjecture by Euler [l] that at least n nth powers are required to sum to an nth power, n>2.
Do I need to know how the direct search was carried out to confirm Euler's conjecture was false?
No.
>>> 27**5 + 84**5 + 110**5 + 133**5 == 144**5
True
Just because you prefer one sort of scientific research doesn't mean other forms aren't science.
Again, is Kekulé's model of the benzene ring less scientific because it came to him in a daydream?
We accept Newton's publications where he secretly used the calculus, even though he didn't publish the calculus, because they could be proved through other more laborious means.
Why is it not scientific to write publications which use secret software, so long as we can verify the results?