>The positive connotation of data mining is examining ...data from various angles to form a hypothesis for further testing.
In other words, science is good (and retrospective analysis can be good science).
My stats prof Andy Barron gave me a copy of his dissertation. I almost dropped it on the floor of his office (it was only 3/16" thick). He proved that systematic data mining sufficed to obtain (in the fullness of time) all truth: if the world is lawful the candidate laws on formulation are recursively enumerable and the candidate data sets against which they may be tested likewise so diagonalization yields a method which converges to the desiderata.