I don't necessarily think it would mean more scientists, but it would mean more expense. You have a moderate number of low impact papers that people are doing for tenure today - papers for the purpose of cranking out papers. We are talking about redirecting efforts but increasing quality of what you have.

It may not be. I would be willing to argue that there was a tipping point and we've long exceeded its boundary - progress and disruption now is just making finding an equilibrium in the future increasingly difficult.

So entering into a paradigm where we test the known space - especially presently - would 1) help reduce cruft; 2) abate undersirable forward progress; 3) train the next generation(s) of scientists to be more diligent and better custodians of the domain.