I think that's all true, plus, from my experience:
- it's now more difficult to identify a truly unexplored area of work within a relatively short amount of time (e.g., the first 2 explorative years of a PhD lasting 4-6 years).
- even if you find a niche where you could make a completely original contribution, you're disincentivized by how hard it is to convince your supervisor and peer reviewers - unless it's painfully obvious or you invest a lot of upfront effort to prove its worth.
- media promotes a fetishized version of original contributions (e.g., theory of relativity that led to a paradigm shift), whereas scientists are taught to always justify their contribution with respect to the existing work; this inevitably prunes many paths and ideas.
- although interdisciplinarity is promoted in opinion pieces, interdisciplinary contributions are often discouraged by the discipline-related communities.
None of this is an excuse, but they're certainly filters and pressure chambers.
- it's now more difficult to identify a truly unexplored area of work within a relatively short amount of time (e.g., the first 2 explorative years of a PhD lasting 4-6 years).
- even if you find a niche where you could make a completely original contribution, you're disincentivized by how hard it is to convince your supervisor and peer reviewers - unless it's painfully obvious or you invest a lot of upfront effort to prove its worth.
- media promotes a fetishized version of original contributions (e.g., theory of relativity that led to a paradigm shift), whereas scientists are taught to always justify their contribution with respect to the existing work; this inevitably prunes many paths and ideas.
- although interdisciplinarity is promoted in opinion pieces, interdisciplinary contributions are often discouraged by the discipline-related communities.
None of this is an excuse, but they're certainly filters and pressure chambers.