I think to put what you are saying a different way, we have optimized the system to reward ambition at the expense of creativity and curiousity. This rewards ca

I think to put what you are saying a different way, we have optimized the system to reward ambition at the expense of creativity and curiousity. This rewards careerist scientists over curious ones because the careerist scientist makes all of the safe bets, exploring things that are well known or alternatively exploring things that they think are "hot" and thus will attract funding and citations. I have been in more than one meeting where someone says things like, "uhh, how can we stick digital twins, machine learning, and this lab apparatus i have together? that will be a compelling application." There is no research questions in that statement, no curiousity about the universe, only ambition to attract funding. I don't think ambition is inherently bad, it is a useful trait to have as a scientist. But we have optimized the system to the point where being ambitiously curious does not seem to be rewarded. I think what you have written here is very well connected to how academia currently functions and disfunctions. Thanks.