[lazyasciiart]

If you’ve spent a significant amount of time widening the scope as far as possible to include everything interesting about your original question, and there is nothing in that whole widened scope that the audience will give a shit about, your topic is unsaveable and your advisor is a failure.

If there is something interesting enough to qualify, then reduce the scope as much as possible. It should go without saying that you shouldn’t throw out the interesting bit.

[stathibus]

The problem that occurs in practice is “focus on finishing” leads people to finish without actually doing anything meaningful. Advisors may or may not encourage this depending on where they are in their career.

When you get on the industry job market nobody cares if it took you 3 years or 7 years to do the work, they only care if it’s meaningful.