[elementalest]

Due to the publication requirements/incentives, academia greatly favours those who take on short term low risk research that will likely result in a few quick easy papers. Furthermore, due to the limited positions available in academia, generally only those who are good at this will rise up in academia.

Getting to a point where you control your own research and have financial stability for research that could span 3+ years with very little output (paper wise) is something comparatively few academics achieve. Even fewer of those who have, did so by conducting longer term research. Most academics I know are just trying to produce as many papers per year as they can and do whatever research in their field they can do, to do it.