As much as it's wading into dangerous territory, I don't honestly believe that including lived experience (personal or while studying a group) is necessarily "not science." If there's an honest record of what's occurring, and individuals are critical of claimed truth, it's still science.
Coming from the Clin Research side (past tense), and especially the Reg/QA end where ethics and safety are on the extremes of testing for bias and error, we still relied on ethnographic studies where more "objective" data simply wasn't available. If anything, that's fundamental to the field.
But, if you happen to have some primer material that's open access, I'd absolutely love to read up on the topic (no rush or pressure, lord knows academics need less pressure every day, and especially on the weekend). And also, an obligatory "Damn you autocorrect!"