Most likley, just another in the thousands of examples of experimental bias over the last 100 years since forever. Or folks talking about doing science when they are actually doing advocacy or cloaking wishful thinking in the garb of science.
My family does not have the most vast of ancient book libraries, but we do have a set of encyclopedias that are over 125 years old.
Always fun to read through them, especially the sections regarding African or Asian topics. The Anglo-Christian-centric judgementalist viewpoint dripped from the pages. My parents have the books right now, or else I would cite the publisher and year, and quote some paragraphs for you.
But, mankind has been writing that way ever since mankind could write, whether on scientific topics, metaphysical, or fiction. The Epic of Gilgamesh, The Torah, The Baghavad Gita, The Tale of Genji, The teachings of Confucius, Plato's writings, or the various research projects commissioned by the Catholic Church in the last 1000 years.
And the current Church of Globular Warming/Cooling/Stasis/Doomsday writes in exactly the same way.
It makes perfect sense that someone seeking validation of a pet theory would succumb to the hubris of creative interpretation of results.