Most researchers would agree with the first statement without significant qualification. Methods are at the end for a reason.

Not disagreeing with your assertion on the opinion of “most researchers” but you’ll often find quite a few people advocating for using the methodology sans data as a means to determine publication worthiness to try and avoid the perverse incentives for novel or meaningful data.

I think it’s too easy to game the data (whether knowingly or not) with poor methodology. I advocate process before product, in other words.