No, I’ve never seen Adams say this. Can you explain what’s insane about it?
If some unlikely event happens, one could assume that it was just a random occurrence, and leave it at that. But that is an assumption one could always make, for any event; “random chance” can explain anything. If, instead, one sets random chance aside for a moment and looks for reasons beside random chance, one could find other possible reasons for the event, and possibly learn something new. Of course, there’s always the possibility that it actually was random chance, in which case one risks seeing spurious non-related events as being causal, and thereby learning the wrong thing. But I think it’s a risk one will have to take in order not to always go “a wizard did it”, never learning anything.
The expression “a wizard did it” means an all-purpose explanation. (https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/AWizardDidIt). I did not refer to literal wizards. I assumed that this expression was well-known enough for me to use here.
The null hypothesis is, likewise, an assumption that nothing has happened; in this case, it would mean that no events have happened to cause the observed unlikely event (which, to be clear, did happen); i.e. it must have happened by random chance.
Yes, to ascribe causation to random chance could be the result of the Holmesian fallacy. But, of course, not necessarily.
If some unlikely event happens, one could assume that it was just a random occurrence, and leave it at that. But that is an assumption one could always make, for any event; “random chance” can explain anything. If, instead, one sets random chance aside for a moment and looks for reasons beside random chance, one could find other possible reasons for the event, and possibly learn something new. Of course, there’s always the possibility that it actually was random chance, in which case one risks seeing spurious non-related events as being causal, and thereby learning the wrong thing. But I think it’s a risk one will have to take in order not to always go “a wizard did it”, never learning anything.