Sure, in an ideal world, the technicians would have analyzed the issue, and figured out exactly the problem instead of fixing it to the MEL.
But if you want to make a system truly safe, you reduce the amount of analysis at each step of the way in favor of SOPs. Every time you require someone to think about a safety-critical element, you incur a significant risk that that person will come to the wrong conclusion. That's why the MEL are checklists are there in the first place.
Look, there's no need for any of this to have a reason, beyond the fact that whenever people are in a hurry, they make mistakes (and hence the proper response to pressure to speed things up is to slow everything down). But if you have to find some sort of technical or procedural reason to crusade vainly for, why not pick on something basic? If every major system on board is affected by whether the aircraft thinks it's on the ground or in flight, shouldn't that state be indicated somewhere obvious and not need to be inferred through looking out the window at the strobes or listening for the faint sounds of fans? I understand some flight crew have even gone so far as to diagnose certain warning horns as a result of the aircraft thinking it was on the ground.
See, now that's a dumb idea too, but not as dumb as prosecuting mechanics.