I'm curious about this as well. Assuming the effects they found were actually legitimate (that is, the alleged "torture" of the data was statistically sound), how is this at all a bad thing? Shouldn't it be safe to assume that they could simply repeat the trial with a different stated objective and successfully yield the positive result? It seems counterproductive indeed to waste time and money like that.
I'm having a hard time seeing the problem with taking an exploratory approach and just testing placebo vs. some treatment and reporting whatever you find.
Please correct me if I'm misguided on any of this.