Clark,
There's a difference between not knowing or understanding all the variables involved in a system, and trying to explain contradictions between empirical observations and our physical models of the universe by assuming that there must be some local hidden variables that we don't know about and that uniquely determine the state of a system (as in the case of using the deterministic Hidden Variable theory to try to refute the non-deterministic nature of quantum mechanics). .
Well yeah, in the sense that the phrase "hidden variable theory" is more specific than an unknown out of control variable(s).
I took honors physics from Brown before he wrote the book "Quantum Field Theory"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lowell_S._BrownAnd I can tell you he was rabidly anti gun.
They fixed his problem. Physics is now explained in terms of baseballs.