It’s a common problem to a lot of areas of modern science: they can only make a viable theory by extrapolating beyond the scope where it would be reasonable to extrapolate. Now, the sensible thing to do in that situation would be simply not to extrapolate. However, if they did that, they would not have a theory to explain many things, and nobody will give them funding for NOT producing theories.
I’m not sure this has anything to do with money (This isn’t climate “science”). After all, the current theories are just the most recent results of theories that have been developed over centuries by people who didn’t get paid for them.
I see this as a case of science working exactly as it should. In this case its a mix of theoretical and actual astronomy that has worked with a single available model until recently. Lots of things are going to change as we find systems in the process of formation and other systems in the process of formation in other ways.