[lupire]

"Research is for prodigies" is extremely specific to (mostly pure) math and theoretical physics, where the results aren't practical so no one cares much about easy problems. Math students solve professor-made-problems for fun and games during school (IMO, Putnam), and rarely does anyone academically publishes the results. (Maybe one big book of 1+ years of problems).

In other more practical fields, less,-inspired research is useful, and also research is slower due to real world complexity and expense, not inherent intellectual difficulty. Like plowing through all possible chemical rejection looking for one that works, or fine tuning a radio in engineering, or a NN or a big program in CS, or running psych / sociology surveys.