It is way too common to confuse the abstractions we use to understand reality with reality itself. Like the scientists who work with this stuff are really consistent in keeping the two separated

I wish this was true. I remember seeing a physicist talking about how the laws of physics are mathematical in nature and that the laws of physics needed to exist before the universe do the universe is made of math. I don’t think the vast majority of physicists have a philosophical grounding for the types of ontological claims they make. Even less so since “shut up and calculate” became the professional axiom.