You can claim that dramatic impact is more difficult to attain without being anti-science. There is no iron law that says we must make dramatic impact, whatever that means.
There are a number of potential causes for the recession of progress that one could suggest. For example, someone suggested the absence of low-hanging fruit. This raises the question of what constitutes "dramatic impact". If it means "deepening of the state of knowledge", then I don't quite buy this one, since impact is measured relative to difficulty and the state of knowledge. A refinement or deepening of a good theory may be all you can hope for, which is a testament to the success of the theory. If it means "overturning old theories", then that seems silly. Science isn't about overturning theories. It is about refining our understanding of the world. We might overturn less accurate theories along the way, but that's not the goal. It's a side effect.
Another possibility is that deepening the state of knowledge is becoming more difficult and prohibitive. Still another is that education has become too homogenized, preventing a diversity of fresh perspectives from entering the discussion (Feynman remarked as much; he said he didn't expect any major advanced in science in the near future precisely for this reason).
In any case, none of these positions are "anti-science" or "anti-public research".