I have a keen interest in Fuel, my life, passengers and freight depend on quality; this quality is expected, and rightly so.
All hydrocarbon fuel products are produced to a compromised level of specified quality, not ultimate quality. By the time all jet fuel is synthesised by the identical method worldwide we will probably have pumped the earth dry.
I remain surprised at the less than emphatic response to a Chemical, Engineering, Production, and Quality "vacuum of knowledge".
I assume you mean among pilots as a group. There is a tremendous amount of knowledge among experts in the various fields that touch on or specialise on fuels.
...consumers of a life dependent product must be patronised with "the great unknown"?
Technical and scientific progress hasn't ceased -- far from it. And the discoveries are quite astonishing while at the same time forcing us to lessen our grip on strongly held rules. Physicists can now pause a pulse of light mid-flight!
As previously posited by another poster, it's likely that jet fuel at extreme low temperatures may become a non-newtonian fluid. The time has come for rheologists to study jet fuel at very low temperatures.
Such studies will require not only complex rigs to simulate the requisite conditions, but thousands of evaluations of the myriad possible combinations of jet fuels and additives.
Have a look here for some idea of
world jet fuel specs and additives.