There doesn't seem to be much interest, among NN researchers, for finding the right tool for the job, in terms of understanding the task at hand and engineering

There doesn't seem to be much interest, among NN researchers, for finding the right tool for the job, in terms of understanding the task at hand and engineering appropriate inputs and features, appropriate neural network types and appropriate training and optimization techniques. Finding the right job for the tool, to the point of repurposing and adapting "proven" network structures or even already trained networks, is an easier and more popular approach.