I didn't see the start of this thread, but John Denker's comment about
the value of working on underspecified problems in the real world is
also true in astrophysics. It may even be correct to say that most of
the interesting problems in astrophysics are underspecified. The extra
degrees of freedom admit many creative solutions to difficult problems,
and most of the solutions that appear in the literature are incorrect,
but still the "discipline" advances, and still it is one of the most
thrilling arenas of current scientific research.