I should probably be more careful with my wording if people are going to take that seriously. Basically, it amounts to this:
If all you want to know about is ATH/SPD/DEF, most of the time you're better off just guessing 25 than spending money scouting it. You'll almost never be off by more than 3 or 4 points in either direction with that guess. Most of the time, 7 or 8 points in one attribute - even ATH - aren't going to make the difference between an adequate player and a stud you want to pull out all the stops for, or between a starter and a total waste of a scholarship. In the vast majority of cases, when your answer is low-high anyway, 25 is still near the middle of the range, and the scouting hasn't provided you with ANY additional information. If the difference between high/high and low/high in one of these typically low-capped ratings (low-capped potential) makes a difference deciding between two players, they're probably close enough not to be worth wasting the money trying to differentiate. And if you're trying to use it to decide whether or not to battle, you'll almost never learn enough to be worth taking the scouting cash away from more economical recruiting efforts in your battle. I'm sure there are exceptions, but in the vast majority of cases - well over 90% I think - the scouting trip info on ATH/SPD/DEF isn't worth spending a lot of money on.
Seems counterintuitive with the importance of those ratings, I know. But no less true for that.