In 1976 a statistician, George Box, stated “All models are wrong, but some are useful."
So, what does this mean? It means that a model is only a representation or simplification of reality. If it were reality, it would be reality and not a model. The amount of model “wrongness” is a matter of degree. The real question is, how wrong do they have to be to not be useful. Put another way, how well does the model reflect reality? For some models we may never really know how closely they reflect reality, and for some we have a pretty darn good idea. For instance, remember when the Google map cartographers had it all wrong and the Google map app kept sending people in the wrong direction? Those models were so wrong they weren’t useful.