There probably should be room in some of the social sciences for flexibility like this as long as it's called out right at the top as part of the experiment design so that the reader knows this is exploratory initial research being done for directional purposes - and that's it.

Unfortunately as the movement from History, Philosophy, and the other liberal arts disciplines became 'sciencified', the ability to deliberate on something rigorous but still with enough room to explore has been sacrificed in favor of trying to be more like the physical sciences.

I personally lean to yes, but that's more about what people do with the results than the results themselves.

Here's an infamous example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milgram_experiment#Validity

Honestly after reading that it seems impossible to really conclude anything...as it's just full of conflicting results...is that innately fraud? No but certainly careers/$ have been made from biased/agenda-driven interpretations which seems fraudulent.

It's also how most empirical science operates.

If someone collects data and the study outcome is not preregistered, you can assume p-hacking. It would be implausible not to. And in most fields, preregistration is not common. (And even if there's preregistration, regularly people just switch their outcomes, and nobody cares.)

And to play the devil's advocate: psychology is probably doing better these days than most other fields, because it's been the posterchild example of the replication crisis.