Taken at face value, your statement seems to imply that if there is any research devoted to a topic using "conventional and accepted statistics", then no one can have an opinion on it.
I don't think you're taking it at face value. Note the word "merely".
There are typically many arguments for and against a particular policy, many costs and benefits. These costs and benefits don't hit everyone equally, which explains most of the difference in political opinion. One category of argument in the political debate is to claim that particular costs or benefits are illusory or of a different scale. The empirical evidence can show that this is false. This does not eliminate the debate. One would hope it would then proceed on different arguments, because denying empirical reality makes any resolution other than physical domination of one party by the other impossible. But even if it does, costs and benefits still fall unequally on the participants, meaning the political division remains. This difference in opinion is normal and legitimate.
[ETA I do not think it is pure coincidence that the group that believes it is more likely to win a contest of physical dominance is the one more likely to deny the validity of empirical evidence.]
There are typically many arguments for and against a particular policy, many costs and benefits. These costs and benefits don't hit everyone equally, which explains most of the difference in political opinion. One category of argument in the political debate is to claim that particular costs or benefits are illusory or of a different scale. The empirical evidence can show that this is false. This does not eliminate the debate. One would hope it would then proceed on different arguments, because denying empirical reality makes any resolution other than physical domination of one party by the other impossible. But even if it does, costs and benefits still fall unequally on the participants, meaning the political division remains. This difference in opinion is normal and legitimate.
[ETA I do not think it is pure coincidence that the group that believes it is more likely to win a contest of physical dominance is the one more likely to deny the validity of empirical evidence.]