[j7ake]

Are you suggesting science and innovation are distinct?

Scientific progress is largely driven by the “Steve Jobs” of sciences.

Only a tiny fraction of papers remain relevant. So that means the quality of the average paper doesn’t matter as much as the quality of the best paper.

[atrettel]

There is actually a lot of debate as to whether scientific discovery is driven by "heroes and geniuses" (as you argue) or by multiple people simultaneously and independently coming up with the same idea [1], often called "multiple discovery". Certainly both have occurred many times over.

That said, multiple discovery seems to be more common nowadays due to the rapid diffusion of information, which means that most people are operating in roughly the same information environment (initial conditions) when they start their research. It is interesting how often multiple discovery happens when you start to look closely at this.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiple_discovery