You're agreeing with the parent. There are metrics to measure solving well-known problems, but no metrics for researching problems to make them well-known.
Here's my theory: we do know how to build very high quality software in a repeatable way. However very few organizations are willing to pay what it costs to do that, and that is why most software is so bad. Admittedly a lot of people writing code these days are "cowboys" (they don't care and neither do their clients, they just want speed) but that doesn't mean that the body of knowledge doesn't exist.
As we all know, something that works 95% of the time at 5% the price is very often better than a "perfect" solution. With critical systems like plane navigation, the tradeoff doesn't make sense, so you pay full price for near-perfection... your niche e-commerce site? 95% is sufficient.
I've done some software for buses, it's toy in comparison (with planes) but you get issues with noise, power supply, vibration, temperature, light (UV killing a touch screen) and probably lots more i've never encountered. The physical world can be every bit as unpredictable as the virtual one.
The only consistent thing you can state is that all these "real world" issues are to do with hardware whereas yours are more softwarey. However the consideration of such issues is necessary across the board.