No, not really. Just a matter of: how good is the information, actually?
So. Taking a step back here.
Knowledge isn't static, it is a process.
You obtain some information, and then you verify it, to ever greater certainty as work and time goes on.
You start with information, data, anecdotes, statistics, whatever you want to call them. You only gain
knowledge when that information has been parsed, cross-referenced, corroborated, etc.
And sometimes that knowledge will be positive, confirming the facial truth of the info; and sometimes it will be negative, disproving that instead. A negative result might not be all that useful -- there might be billions of ways of, say, configuring a circuit of just a few components -- but it is still, technically, forward progress to be able to test and discard individual configurations.
SPICE models might be good, they might be trash. It's a good bet at least that, if they look like hack jobs (low LEVEL model, linear capacitances, poor fitting waveforms), they're probably not very representative, and if they look pretty solid, they are likely usefully representative.
Same for datasheets, same for anything else. Same for what's on TV! Don't let a single clip of news by your eyes without critiquing it in exactly the same way! It's not just a good life lesson but a critical one, sadly one an awful lot of people miss out on (whether entirely, or through incomplete application thereof).
It also works the other way. My note about well-defined loads should be read as instruction, not a mere condition. As the designer,
you are wholly, personally and solely responsible for the integrity of your design. You have complete control over every facet of it. You can model everything. You can read datasheets until your eyes bleed, selecting the right parts, or seeing what's available. (Well, in most practical projects, you won't exactly have
unlimited time available, but it also happens often enough that a salaried position has substantial downtime between projects; you can use that time for entertainment or education, it's your choice!) There is no need to leave this to chance, you can explore all corners of operation of your e.g. switching power supply, and see what happens to switching loss and all that under every possible condition, as well as what to do about it (e.g. for a resonant supply, simply stay at or above resonance; if it gets stuck below, maybe just bail -- fault out and wait a bit before resetting).
I'm not sure how well this thought process comes out from my above post -- perhaps it would be automatically understood as a story of such researches, to one who has experience with the process; perhaps to someone less so inclined, it just looks like me showing off a bunch of stuff I did. Heh, or maybe I should've went with the
spreadsheet view instead? Hard to say, static infodumps hide a lot of the
process through which they were created. Obviously, that spreadsheet didn't appear out of thin air, but what does it all mean and how what it constructed? Maybe it's more of white-noise than a puzzle to figure out... I don't know.
Not trying to scold here, it's just, I wish there were some way to convey this thought process that was intuitively, vacuously obvious, and immediately applicable. Alas, it seems -- whether simply never having been exposed to, or taught it, or if through an innate inability to do so (I hope not!) -- many do not reach this realization. So I fear I'm mostly talking into the abyss on philosophical (epistemological?) subjects like this. Which I in turn justify to myself as at least being a vent with which to further solidify my own views of the subject, and perhaps someone will get lucky and benefit from it as well...
Tim