It is more powerful. Data is often meaningless without interpretation, missing many dimensions, easily and often manipulated, funded by unknown desires and forces, and generally unreliable. Outside of the hardest of sciences it’s worse than worthless.
Meanwhile a single sharp person who lives in a city and interacts with the right intersection of people will tell you closer to the truth than even the better quality studies or media outlets. To think otherwise is imo foolish.
You're right it's much better to rely on information that is expected to be meaningless, has zero dimensions, is guaranteed to be biased, has no backing, and is scientifically proven to be unreliable.
If your trust for first hand accounts from people you trust is meaningless, I feel sorry for you. And if you aren’t able to intuit their biases based on your history with them and take that into account, more so.
That you seemingly missed the caveat that I mentioned about “hard sciences” also not a good sign.
