I was thinking the exact same thing. Research in academia, research labs, and even in some business environments used to be able to focus on and tackle big prob

I was thinking the exact same thing. Research in academia, research labs, and even in some business environments used to be able to focus on and tackle big problems. These days, funding agencies/sponsors are incorporating more and more business mentality into the research process and focusing on concepts like "sustainability" etc. with short turn around. You can't expect short term results on difficult problems. If they were easy, they'd have already been solved.