Ed Witten is uncharacteristically brilliant and yet he (in my opinion) fell prey to the “masses” of physicists who clung to String theory despite its inability

Ed Witten is uncharacteristically brilliant and yet he (in my opinion) fell prey to the “masses” of physicists who clung to String theory despite its inability to yield results. Imo, that’s a counter example to your point. Thinking differently than other people and outside the masses doesn’t make one smart, take any non Ted Kasinski serial killer