That may be, but if you label them 'impossible' and dismiss them, you won't gather more evidence to prove it. And if something you consider impossible has actually happened, you're missing an opportunity to improve your model significantly.
This is in fact what happens in-context. With a preposterously-detailed description of observable events (via magic hypnosis; I didn't say the novel made sense), Gently concludes that something has happened which could not have happened as described, and that the only explanation which would explain the results involves time travel; the other person says that it's impossible, to which Gently replies this.
Yeah, I feel like in real world situations, hypothesizing time travel when things don't make sense is not likely to be epistemically successful.
Wasn't there a proverb about generalizing from fictional evidence? Especially from fiction that intentionally doesn't make sense?
Another month, another rationality quotes thread. The rules are: