Ah. To give a more controversial answer to your comment; you are asking, very reasonably: "isn't the solution to a deficit of scientific rigour, to increase scientific rigour"?
Unfortunately, while machine learning is a very active research field that has contributed much technology, certainly to the industry but also occasionally to the sciences, it has been a long time since anyone has successfully accused it of science. There is not so much a deficit of scientific rigour, as a complete and utter disregard for it.
Machine learning isn't science. It's a bunch of grown-up scientists banging their toy blocks together and gloating for having made the tallest tower.
Unfortunately, while machine learning is a very active research field that has contributed much technology, certainly to the industry but also occasionally to the sciences, it has been a long time since anyone has successfully accused it of science. There is not so much a deficit of scientific rigour, as a complete and utter disregard for it.
Machine learning isn't science. It's a bunch of grown-up scientists banging their toy blocks together and gloating for having made the tallest tower.
(there, I said it)