Science works best when people are:
- Creatively thinking
- Use ideas from other scientific areas for their scientific area
The book "How We Got To Now" does a fabulous job of showing that science is not a uniform step by step process instead is a tree with different branches.
AC and refrigerators all started because someone wanted to ship ice to tropical locations for money.
SETI is another prefect example. A bunch of scientists sat around and said to themselves "We have all these new instruments for space. What if we tried to find alien life with it?"
It drives billionaires insane know that they are losing at the imaginary numbers game.