Intuitively this sounds like confirmation for the current system. The thing is, that it takes time to understand truly novel research, while a measurement like

Intuitively this sounds like confirmation for the current system. The thing is, that it takes time to understand truly novel research, while a measurement like the discovery of the Higgs has a immediate impact, because the Higgs mechanism was studied for 40 years. (To be clear, I believe that the focus on citations is stupid for other reasons, but this does not seem to be a failure of the system.)