She never struck me as a scientist. More like a scholar who dabbled in reverse engineering lost technology. Between that and the fact that her entire community of ancient tech researchers consists of maybe 5 people, and it's a wonder they manage to produce ANYTHING of value.

I'm about to blow your minds with this one, or maybe just get buried, but a lot, just, a LOT of BOTW and TOTK can be explained with one simple fact:

Purah is actually a really terrible scientist. Absolute garbage tier. The one useful thing she actually did that was new was an accident she hasn't been able to replicate that almost killed her and everything else has been making directly inferior knockoffs of pre-existing sheikah tech.