“In theory I agree, but I very rarely run into people who actually do so on their own” This board is full of people who actually learn on their own:) People learned to code, people learned how to run businesses and people have learned how to build purely based on their passion to learn/build and contribute to the world. The reason why this is less so in science is that the resources are behind a paywall. I recently left my academic life to start a business and as such, I don’t have access to scientific papers anymore….this limits my ability. This is also the major motivation for my startup which will bring raw academic scientific data to the public…but I digress. The fact is that you are surrounded by those people, but they aren’t bringing their ideas to science because the process by which science is done doesn’t allow for it…and that is a problem.
Re: peer-review papers/quality: ahha, I’m not sure I agree. Peer review in theory is great, in practice it’s BS/politics/$$$$. Also, in my experience (YMMV), a lot of references in intros/discussions are “oh shit, you have to reference Joe Schmoe’s 2008 paper here because he is on the editorial board.” Not to discredit your point, I agree that peer review papers, citations and the like are important, but they are being abused now (at least in bio).
This is long winded, but my point is that we don’t see a lot of people contributing to science because they don’t have the resources to do so. I think that needs to change soon and I’m working to make that happen.