No, they should not have done that: clear scientific malpractice. But I guess they wanted the fame they duly acquired. They also abandoned their original plan to repeat the measurement at three-monthly intervals, and let stand their single result.
And now for the bad news. Every experiment that looked for an aether drift - every experiment, I kid you not - actually found one. This includes Sagnac (1913), Michaelson & Gale (1925), and, especially, the numerous experiments of Dayton Miller, from 1906 to 1933.
Details here: http://www.orgonelab.org/miller.htm
After collating many experiments, Miller claimed the Earth had a velocity, relative to the aether, of about 298 km/sec. Today, we claim the Earth has a velocity, relative to the cosmic microwave background radiation, of about 370 km/sec. Plus ca change.
Ping of interest