There is no such thing as 'the right way round' when dealing with things that have been true for longer than the human species has existed and will continue to be true after the last human is dust. There are things that are true and things that are not, and we do our best to figure out what ideas get classified in which side of that hard boundary. We can agree on standards of evidence, but at the end of the day one can be scientific without being rigorous.

The XKCD comic isn't making a judgement on whether the characters in it are or are not scientists - in fact, it calls them scientists - it is pointing out that statistical significance is a low bar of evidence and best treated with suspicion.