Sure, but I'd say there are three things going on here though. 1) Scientific method (what you originally described) 2) NHST (where some default hypothesis is

Sure, but I'd say there are three things going on here though. 1) Scientific method (what you originally described) 2) NHST (where some default hypothesis is tested) 3) Engineering (where you perform some kind of feat to demonstrate capability) The problems seem to be with people doing #2 rather than the others.