I think this perspective overlooks how human expertise actually works. Humans in cutting-edge research also get things wrong a lot: most hypotheses fail, most experiments don't pan out, and most novel approaches lead nowhere.

When we celebrate a scientist who makes a breakthrough, we're not crediting them for being right 100% of the time. We're recognizing that they were right more often than random chance and earlier in the process than would otherwise occur.

A researcher (or AI) who can identify promising directions at a 2/99 or 3/99 rate instead of 1/99 is genuinely valuable – they're effectively doubling or tripling the efficiency of the discovery process.

Imagine if AI can test theories in under 100 seconds AND is slightly better out of 99 tries at getting things right. Beats the human out of the water.