alt Hacker News> Ortega most likely would have disagreed with the hypothesis that has been named after him, as he held not that scientific progress is driven mainly by the accumulation of small works by mediocrities, but that scientific geniuses create a framework within which intellectually commonplace people can work successfully
This is hilarious
To me this kind of sounds like the other side of the same thing. Lunchpail scientists accumulate data within an area of research made interesting by a landmark work by a big name. Future big names make breakthroughs by drawing together a lot of the lunchpail work. etc etc