Is data everything?

Dr. William Farr and his support of for the theory of "Miasma" had thoroughly examined data to back their hypothesis. UCLA's Epi page has details https://www.ph.ucla.edu/epi/snow/farrgraph.html 

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Dr. William Farr, wasn't a lonely crusader who could be easily dismissed as sometimes is the case with public health researchers; he was the assistant commissioner for the 1851 census and a career employee of the government's General Register Office. And he had the data to support his idea. Still, it wasn't quite what caused cholera as we all know now. Of course this was before the germ theory or the epidemiological triad was put into practice; and before confounding identified as a variable lurking to cause spurious associations.

Aren't we glad that scientific methods have come such a long way (molecular bio-surveillance and all),  but this makes me quite sure that some axioms will always hold true.

 Data without context is nothing!