I agree with your overall message but it's those thousand people and the hundreds of thousands ( maybe millions ) of people who make the scientific progress possible. It takes a community and an infrastructure to turn a scientific discovery into scientific progress.
Like it took thousands or millions of people to take the discoveries of von Neumann, Church, Turing, etc into something worthwhile.
I agree with your overall message but it's those thousand people and the hundreds of thousands ( maybe millions ) of people who make the scientific progress possible. It takes a community and an infrastructure to turn a scientific discovery into scientific progress.
Like it took thousands or millions of people to take the discoveries of von Neumann, Church, Turing, etc into something worthwhile.