Anyone can cherry pick examples to support that science is incremental (or not). The current structure of academic science struggles to reward creative thinking, struggles to support eccentric thinking, and struggles to move outside of their ivory domain based towers. It’s both a bureaucratic issue and one of hierarchy and power within science itself. I have seen far too many physicists resist changing how they teach because they have already figured out how to educate how dare you question them. I have seen far too many seismologists refuse to use non acoustic data sets because why wouldnt seismic data be enough? These are often even young people who refuse to step outside of their domains point of view perhaps from fear that they will never secure a faculty position. Additionally it is often times driven by university politics and finances. For example, Most R1 universities large revenue source is grant overheads, and yet most faculty have little say on how those overheads are spent because university democracies and leadership have been replaced with administrators building bureaucracies. I say this as a scientist for 15 years whose published over 30 papers, won grants, advised phds and postdocs, etc. the system would do well to change if only to give more time back to scientists to do science they find interesting instead of what can be keyworded in to grant applications.

> Anyone can cherry pick examples to support that science is incremental

This is not a rebuttal of what I stated. You dismiss my data and provide no data of your own, just feelings. I appreciate what you're trying to say, but bring data or else we can't discuss it meaningfully.