There is a phenomenon in academia I call the "pissing on a lamppost" phenomenon. A well-known researcher mentions his thoughts on (topic) in the penultimate par

There is a phenomenon in academia I call the "pissing on a lamppost" phenomenon. A well-known researcher mentions his thoughts on (topic) in the penultimate paragraph of a paper on something else. When you talk to them, they say "oh, I don't actually know how to do that, but I think it should work!" So some sucker like me goes & figures out how it actually works, but... BigName has already discussed it so it's not a new result (see citation for penultimate paragraph) so we are not interested in publishing it :) You can get around it if you show BigName is wrong but if they've been vague enough that's hard.