THE TYRANNY OF THE MINIMUM PUBLISHABLE UNIT.

Academic prestige is a high-risk, high-reward environment.  But deans count, although many can't read.  Sometimes, though, there is value in doing research about research.

“Pursuing innovation is a gamble, without enough payoff, on average, to justify the risk,” the study says. “Nevertheless, science benefits when individuals overcome the dispositions that orient them toward established islands of knowledge … in the expanding ocean of possible topics.”

Indeed. There is no shortage of interesting questions. Tractable and interesting, that's another matter. Tractable and fungible, that's where a lot of the publication action is.