Even when the obvious thing is right, there's a difference between an obvious conclusion arrived at by guessing and an obvious thing arrived at by scientific inquiry. The former is highly subject to bias, and indistinguishable from the wrong and obvious guess that accompanied it; the latter is less subject to bias, and can be distinguished from its wrong variant.
(To put it maybe more pithily, someone who believes an obvious thing has given me no new information, but someone who proves an obvious thing has given me new information. There's a reason science places so much weight on reproducibility, even though, eventually, it's just giving the 'obvious' result!)
I wholly agree. Sorry if my initial post gave the opposite impression. I’m very much in favour of supporting hypotheses with evidence and discarding those which are incompatible with facts as observed.
(To put it maybe more pithily, someone who believes an obvious thing has given me no new information, but someone who proves an obvious thing has given me new information. There's a reason science places so much weight on reproducibility, even though, eventually, it's just giving the 'obvious' result!)