In my experience, it depends on the scientist. But it’s hard to know what an advance is. Like, people long searched for evidence of æther before giving up and accepting that light doesn’t need a medium to travel in. Perhaps 100 years from now people will laugh at the attention is all you need paper that led to the llm craze. Who knows. That’s why it’s important to give space to science. From my understanding Lorenz worked for 5 years without publishing as a research scientist before writing his atmospheric circulation paper. That paper essentially created the field of chaos. Would he be able to do the same today? Maybe? Or maybe counting papers or impact factors or all these other metrics turned science into a game instead of an intellectual pursuit. Shame we cannot ask Lorenz or Maxwell about their times as a scientist. They are dead.