Precisely. Pontificating from ivory towers doesn't accomplish much except to inflate egos.
By the same token, all the ideas that later became engineering marvels had to start with a theory. It's just that the conclusions these days so often dictate the discoveries.
I agree. I love the crazies in R&D. Makes my life very interesting, and they get a home run now and again. But they also are constrained by “Does this apply to our goals?” We don’t have the FDA in our pocket the push through things with false trials (which is good). What we do has to work. So even with research, it boils down to “Work or not?”