it's clearly better than objectively assessing each piece of evidence to determine said defendant's guilt.

You're missing the point of Dana's comments. She had objectively assessed each piece of evidence, to suggest otherwise does a huge disservice to the entire Serial team.

It is important to remember that the Serial team did not have SS's blogs. SK and Dana spent a good amount of time trying to refute the cellphone evidence in the process of their reporting. First they got their own cellphone expert, who said that the science was sound and presented properly, so no luck there. Then SK turned to Deirdre for the specific purpose of refuting the cellphone evidence, but she was "entirely unhelpful on that front." I think that these are very important things to consider when criticizing Dana's unlucky argument. She wasn't making a claim based on statistics. She was saying, here is a reminder of some of the things that look bad for Adnan, based on the evidence, and he doesn't have a good explanation for them. Without an explanation, you're left with, "well that sucks if you're innocent."

It is really easy to scoff at the semantics of her calling it unlucky, but keep in mind that at the time this episode aired, the LP calls were undeniably damning for Adnan. Adnan himself admits it.

The point of SK bringing her in on the last episode is because SK was obviously more emotionally involved, and all of her reasons for thinking that Adnan is innocent we entirely based emotion. They brought Dana to be the more objective voice (the reason for the Mr. Spock comment). By allowing Dana voice the impersonal summary of evidence, it allowed for SK to end on a more emotional conclusion. It provided a beautiful symmetry to the final episode that was the setup of the ultimate, "well the Adnan I knew couldn't have done it."