Bear with me, on this... I've considered it an inordinately long time. I order a seed, plant it, and proudly say; "This is an 'Acapulco Gold' reefer plant. How do I know? A couple o' few weeks ago, my partner shared a YouTube video with me. Purportedly, it was done under some official purvey (university?). The experimenters took a most obvious genetic trait to measure; Indica V Sativa. (full gene mapping being so tedious and expensive) The reefer was purchased at Canadian Dispensaries; carefully labeled. Indica, Sativa, and the myriad hybrids... 70% were labeled incorrectly... JUST based upon the Indica / Sativa / hybrid percentile trait. One Sativa was, in fact, an Indica... (or vice versa) So, tell me; How do I know?
It's even worse than you've described. One urban legend is that a grower changed the name of the strain he was about to deliver to a dispensary to match the most popular (and expensive) strain of that day. White widow (or any other strain) from one breeder might be radically different from white widow from a different breeder. With autos, there might be only a small resemblance between an auto white widow and a photo white widow. My experience is that the "% indica" and "% sativa" numbers are in the ballpark.