Yes. This is fairly common in the sciences, because all the good people always know the important problems in their field and are constantly trying to figure ou

Yes. This is fairly common in the sciences, because all the good people always know the important problems in their field and are constantly trying to figure out how to tackle them. Then, when a new technique is discovered (perhaps in a slightly unrelated area), it will quickly be tried on these hard problems to see if it helps. Sometimes it does.