This also explains why most PhD theses are only a tiny advance towards the problem. At the frontier you have no idea which details matter and, worse, details ar

This also explains why most PhD theses are only a tiny advance towards the problem. At the frontier you have no idea which details matter and, worse, details arise where you didn’t know even mattered. The good scientists have an intuition for problems where the hairy details and solvable and they are good at solving. Part of research is to develop this intuition.