Seems to me it's more the inverse - Elon bashers trying to find a way to paint everything he's ever done as a dumb failure because they hate some unrelated thing that he did. Not saying the guy is perfect, but if he is a fuckup, you should be able to make the case without disingenuous arguments like misunderstanding the purpose of test flights.

Multiple iterations of test flights that are expected to fail is a much faster way to develop impressive tech than spending 3x longer doing on the ground analysis of every detail of everything because you can't bear the PR hit of something that can be painted as a failure.