This remind me of [Why Greatness Cannot Be Planned](https://mythoftheobjective.com). When looking at scientific discovery there many examples of happy accidents. The researchers were not intending to find the breakthrough that they did. It was the willingness to change course and explore a new and interesting thing that they just stumbled onto. Examples: penicillin, superglue, radioactivity, cosmic background radiation etc. I loved the example of Robert Williams who pointed the HST at an empty patch of sky for 10 days. He had his time allocated and no one could stop him but the other astronomers thought it a poor use of resources. It resulted in the famous Hubble Deep Field image.

Counter example is the decades that amyloid cascade hypothesis was the only allowed / funded research of Alzheimer disease.