That comment on incentives is funny, but I'm not sure it captures the situation here: The mathematicians who wrote The Disc Embedding Theorem have been quite s

That comment on incentives is funny, but I'm not sure it captures the situation here: The mathematicians who wrote The Disc Embedding Theorem have been quite successful. All are on the tenure ladder (or tenured already) and publishing novel research in a field they revitalized. I can see how sinking time into this is risky, but that's generally true of choosing a field of research. I think the authors deserve credit for doing it well. Likewise, Peter Teichner should get a little credit for helping to create the space for them to do so.