It’s certainly useful data, but otherwise it lacks any meaningful analysis.
That said, this can't be "useful data" unless you are willing to accept non falsifiable interpretations. There's no way of formulating such an interpretation.
Whether or not we call it science is semantics, highly loaded semantics. We could stop calling it science, but then we'd have to also stop being derisive of unscientific methodology.
More realistically, maybe we should rename "the scientific method" to "the Popperian standard." After all, both the term science and its associated culture predate the definition/standard you are alluding to.
The researchers themselves haven't done anything wrong. They're researching interesting things in theory field, and publishing in the format journals demand... ostensibly to satisfy objections such as yours.
You can't have it both ways.
Pesky reproducibility!
Agreed, that is mostly how it goes.
On a similar note, null-hypothesis testing is not a true and tried scientific method. It started sometime in the early 20th century. Aside from p-hacking and mistakes of that kind, there are many philosophical problems with the use of statistical inference itself.
You kind of have to have a hypothesis, then "test" it with data. A more reasonable approach (IMO) would be "We found this interesting phenomenon" followed by inevitably speculative interpretation. That's realistically how it works in practice, but to be published you need to fit a popperian formula. A more ponderous version of this probably wouldn't have been accepted.
I mean, using a method of diagnosing depressed individuals on a collective psychology of a society is already veering into wtf territory, in terms of interpretation. OTOH, it is interesting and probably significant somehow.
IDK how or what they could have done better, and this does seem like a result worth publishing, assuming the methodology is good. Ultimately, I think people reading the paper mostly read it that way anyhow. Authors found X. Seems interesting. Here's how they're interpreting it. Here's my speculation.
Journalists OTOH, they'll cite the hypothesis verbatim if it fits the article they're writing. I think that's where the shoehorning is a problem. As long as you're reading the paper directly yourself, who cares what order the paragraphs are in.