[JackFr]

> And hence have discovered GR in the process.

Fascinating to wonder how modern physics community worldview would be different, if GR had gone [empirical anomaly -> new theory], and ended up in the same place rather than [thought experiment -> empirical proof]. (IAN a historian of physics - forgive me if I have that wrong.)

> Alternatively (and more likely) we would have decided the idea simply doesn't work.

I don't think that's true. Consider the Bell Labs guys who won the Nobel Price for Microwave Background Radiation, who were just trying to remove the noise their antenna was receiving.

[smueller1234]

Bell Labs and the CMB is nice example! At the same time, it unfortunately doesn't give us any intuition about how many times somebody doing engineering had less tenacity or experience and gave up instead of ending up with a Nobel Prize. :)