Anyone who wants high mean low variance career should become an accountant or a dentist: the payoff is vastly better, and it takes a comparable amount of intelligence.

This low variance attitude is why we can't have nice things. We have more "scientists" alive now than at any time in human history, and it is boring and useless with virtually no downstream results.

Part of the issue is that scientific fields are very punishing if you deliver negative results, thus the incentive to "shoot for the moon" is greatly lessened.