> Complicated yes, but surely nothing that most people couldn't figure out if they had the curiosity and no formal education in the field is it? [...]
The most curiosity and passionate about a topic of research often tend to go into academic research.
I don't think experiment design is something scientists are necessarily very good at or needed for. Just look at the recent articles pointing out the large proportion of bad results - probably coming from bad experiment design. A hobbyist on the other hand, could try again when it fails and fix problems.
Could it be the hard part is writing it up and submitting to a journal? That's not something you could just hack together without a lot of probably uninteresting self-teaching.