Mr. Optimistic;
Does "option space" refer to the time available to assess a situation, decide upon a course of action, assess the response and secure the airplane? I hadn't heard of the term but likely it applies!
The danger of subtlely being taken in by hindsight bias is always there even when one really tries to avoid it; - we simply know what happened beforehand. The best that can be hoped for in these practical experiments is some sense of possible recovery time. "What would one do?" is not part of the exercise because we already really, really know what we would do!, and we weren't there... ;-)
But two questions remain unanswered: "Why the initial pitch-up?", and "Why wasn't the stall warning heeded post-apogee?". We've all seen various explanations as to why and are waiting to see how the BEA HF people come to terms with these two inexplicable matters and how such compares with our own thoughts and suggestions.