- Some do, and we're really bad at figuring out which ones the are, especially ahead of time.
- It's a collective effort. Your thesis and my thesis might not be particularly groundbreaking or influential individually, but each one is a tiny step, more or less in the right direction, towards understanding something. It's mostly a myth that "geniuses" make huge leaps forward, while everyone else muddles around. Most ideas are presaged in the literature for a while before someone puts them together and runs with it.
The large majority of phds collect fewer than 20 citations. Most papers are ready by only a handful of people. "Screaming into the void" is a pretty accurate representation of many phds (including my own).
