Seems to me that the foundations are not crumbling, but there should be a way to formally determine how good is a model going to be in the wild before it is use

Seems to me that the foundations are not crumbling, but there should be a way to formally determine how good is a model going to be in the wild before it is used, especially in certain industries. Which I think it's where research is focused on these days? White box models, Bayesian distributions etc.?