Three problems here. First, you need to research something with market viability. Second, your research needs to pan out in success; you won't do very well no matter how hard you advance the field just because you discovered all kinds of ways to rule out failures; discover something or bust. Third, even if you pull it off, the money is not a match for similar success in other fields. The bitter reality is a lot of brilliant people doing great work for little reward, and a lot of other brilliant people saying to hell with that noise. The safe jobs have a low ceiling (eg university research), the cushy jobs have high risk (R&D for big pharma), and the little guys are slaving away with far less chance than most realize that it'll actually pan out into a big score. If you are not actually driven at an ideological level to pursue that work, there's no point to it.
For my friend working on an ebola vaccine that meant trips to Liberia, then 12+ hour days and zero days off (experiments don't take holidays), and she's one of the absolutely lucky as fuck ones because ebola became THE disease and therefore they got stable funding - until all the hype she was floating side job offers in the inevitable possibility that they all got fucked.