>> And if you submit a proposal that says "I'm going to go off and work on this crazy idea, and maybe there's a one in a thousand chance that I'll discover some of the secrets of the universe, and a 99.9% chance that I'll come up with bubkes," you get turned down.

That's just people being chicken. You know someone got to research why wombat poop comes out in cubes:

https://gizmodo.com/we-finally-know-how-wombats-produce-thei...

I could spend a couple hours giving physicists off-the-wall ideas that have some degree of plausibility. All worth exploring rigorously IMHO.