This seems reasonable to me. On the one hand, every available approach to an open problem is going to be deficient in some way, but on the other hand it's difficult to figure out the missing insights if you don't know what insights already exist. The best way to deal with this is probably to just study lots of different things (everything, if possible).

This also probably pertains more to theoretical science. Empirical science seems like it operates more in the realm of "what kinds of facts have we not gathered that might be important?" rather than necessarily talking about theoretical insight that could be gained.

Ugh. Science methodology is hard.