I think the main issue is interpolation vs extrapolation. Statistical models work well within the domain where data is available but have trouble generalizing t

I think the main issue is interpolation vs extrapolation. Statistical models work well within the domain where data is available but have trouble generalizing to where data is unavailable. The very cool thing with physics is that theory was able to make a lot of true but wild predictions that only much later were backed up with experiment. Such powerful theories are very useful for finding interesting phenomena to study/exploit