That is what 90% of science is really. There aren't a lot of truly "aha" moments where someone discovers something fundamental with little outside influence.
This is what I think AI as it gets better will be great at and result in some great discoveries. Today we have millions of research papers on millions of topics the amount of knowledge is impossible for any one human or a group of humans to know so requires serendipity for some discoveries.
A person suffering hallucinations are the only true creatives, the rest is inadvertent or intentional synthesis.