“Rationalisation of a predetermined bottom-line” is not always be a bad thing. It is common enough in Mathematics that you intuitively feel a result is right, and you work backwards from the result to see how you can prove it. The real mistake is if you do not take care in working it out backwards, and make wrong inferential steps in the chain. You may (legitimately) point out failures of this strategy, but there are also successes that you need to acknowledge.
“Rationalisation of a predetermined bottom-line” is not always be a bad thing. It is common enough in Mathematics that you intuitively feel a result is right, and you work backwards from the result to see how you can prove it. The real mistake is if you do not take care in working it out backwards, and make wrong inferential steps in the chain. You may (legitimately) point out failures of this strategy, but there are also successes that you need to acknowledge.