Yet your ideas could get you millions in publicity, fame, etc. to spend literally one week to advance the field. The fact that you actually argue against this is laughable, not to mention incredibly selfish.

What makes you think the idea is significant enough to get “millions in publicity”, etc.?

He’s not claiming he invented cold fusion, just something that would be an iterative step in improving the state of the art, probably worth one paper in a decent but not super prestigious journal. Where do you get the idea that it’s worth a free Ph.D, fame and fortune, and all that?

What makes you think that they wouldn't? That's why I used the operative word "could".

Because I’m aware enough of the CS world that I just know that an iterative improvement in an obscure data structure is not enough to become rich and famous.

This. It's an iterative improvement on a data structure that in reality isn't useful as used on benchmarks and the benchmark performance is a totally artificial environment with little practical significance. It warrants a blog post more than a paper. Nobody is going to get rich or famous off of it. If someone wants to write it up as a blog post, I'll give them the code.

Why do you assume it is an iterative improvement? You can get a free PhD for a lot less. You can get rich and famous for a lot less. You don't have to make cold fusion viable.