Absolutely part of this is ignoring data. But part of it is also a "tactics" vs. "strategy" problem. Every time someone makes this kind of specific proposal, what they are failing to do is lay out a high-level "value" proposition: How does doing this thing you propose meet one of our strategic goals? If it is truly a "good idea", then it should be easy to articulate what strategic goal it achieves. Of course developing strategic goals means looking at the data and agreeing to what needs fixing, but looking at data is the means, not the ends. The ends are to come up with a set of values (aka strategic goals), so that the discussion centers around whether or not a particular proposal is meeting that goal or not. Make it clear that looking at the data is meant to result in an articulable list of values/goals.
