It happens often in media, but real scientists don’t rely on what they think animals think, instead using objective data like brain activity scans, heartbeat rates etc, often presenting pure data without a conclusion on what they think the animal feels. Those studies will then come to media, where the interviewed scientists will give their thoughts on how they interpret the results, even if it’s obvious that the animal likes/dislikes something. These also exist in media.

Edit: I also want to add that many things are straight up visibly harming the animal and you don’t even need any conclusions. For example if you house a hole-dwelling spider without enough substrate to dig, it will stop eating. This has been confirmed many times, by many owners. It doesn’t matter if it makes them uncomfortable or they feel pain from it, or they are cold, etc, because we know that they stop eating, and that’s a good enough signal that something’s bad.