I am wondering why you think the belief, that different models are too hard to distinguish experimentally, is incorrect - after all, the achievment of such a distinction would seem to be highly motivating. To take a historical example, The publication of Bell's inequality motivated a successful program leading to its experimental verification; do you have in mind some potential experiment to distinguish between models that is being wrongly ignored on the grounds that it is too hard to persue?
An alternative explanation for quantum foundations being in limbo is that it is extremely difficult to come up with alternatives that offer a possibility of verification.
Update: writing this reminded me of [1], in which a simple experiment by Shahriar Afshar, that arguably challenged one tenet of the Copenhagen interpretation, provoked a disturbingly over-the-top response, which supports your position on how work on quantum fundamentals is opposed (though, personally, I doubt it succeeds in challenging the Copenhagen interpretation. Interestingly, the opponents of Afshar's interpretation do not all agree on why they think it is wrong.)
An alternative explanation for quantum foundations being in limbo is that it is extremely difficult to come up with alternatives that offer a possibility of verification.
Update: writing this reminded me of [1], in which a simple experiment by Shahriar Afshar, that arguably challenged one tenet of the Copenhagen interpretation, provoked a disturbingly over-the-top response, which supports your position on how work on quantum fundamentals is opposed (though, personally, I doubt it succeeds in challenging the Copenhagen interpretation. Interestingly, the opponents of Afshar's interpretation do not all agree on why they think it is wrong.)
[1] https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg19325915-400-quantum-...