When I did some grad research, the tutors covered this, they told us that our 'important' job was to dig down deeper into the minutiae that previous research had left undone. So rather than looking for anything big/new, we were to improve upon what had already been discovered. They said that there was so much work to be done just plugging in the gaps of the multitudinous research gone before us and we were encouraged to leave questions in our own papers for those after us to dig further down into. This was human science not a tech field, so there are/were different goals, but I can imagine them saying the same in other contexts as there is always improvements to be made on existing processes rather than risky discovery. We were also told that earlier left-field discoveries were accidental or drug-induced which of course was frowned upon. I saw that research funnel as a general zeitgeist to shift culture away from biblical truths. Now I also see it as a planned agenda to avoid all sorts of discoveries and demoralize humanity.