At a certain level of abstraction, perhaps, but someone who's only good at learning and regurgitating existing knowledge is still not going to do well at even routine research. The "routine" of bulk research is still a higher-order routine than standardized tests.

> As a counterpoint, I would like to say that a lot of research still is 'routine intellectual work'. Movers and shakers are rare and far apart.

While this is very true, the "movers and shakers" are the ones who set the standard of a research culture. Frankly, that's why the US has a major research advantage over most (probably all) countries that strongly embrace tiger parenting.

It's fairly routine, but by the standards of, say, the LSAT or GRE, it's hardly signposted at all. I kinda understated my point in the original post by not making it clear we're not talking about discoveries of breathtaking originality; more "do your first independent work" at the honors or 'new senior dev' level.