On the other hand, the past decade has taught us again and again how powerful crowdsourcing can be.
Also, the crowd sourcing aspect of the whole protein folding thing merely involved doing the grunt work, of which there was so much the scientists that set up the parameters for it couldn't possibly do it all themselves. The true achievement was thinking up the parameters for the thousands of monkeys to twiddle, not the twiddling itself.
So let me correct it - it's not the exception that proves the rule, it's yet another example of crowd sourcing contributing little of true significance.