You have many good points.
Let me just say that Popper has been philosophically criticized to the point that some say it is a dead horse. Why are we still using this mixture of Fisherian and Neymar-Pearson hypothesis testing (that is if we don't use bayesian methods)? Because it practically works well, not because Popper was right or found a deep philosophical truth.
These methods just generate more often than not knowledge, as we can judge from the consequences.
I argue that nobody cares if the assumptions we put into the frameworks are philosophical true - they are possibilities, and we try some out. So far we seem to be doing pretty well, no matter what philosophers say about the truth of these assumptions.
I also think bending philosophy to apply to practical advice like "use the tool that works" will not leave much to the notion of philosophy.
But it's not that I have a fixed metaphysical position here. I really only use the tool that was most promising in the past for the task at hand. Never needed philosophy.