Question: why are so many leading modern scientists so dull and lacking in scientific ambition? Answer: because the science selection process ruthlessly weeds-out interesting and imaginative people. At each level in education, training and career progression there is a tendency to exclude smart and creative people by preferring Conscientious and Agreeable people. The progressive lengthening of scientific training and the reduced independence of career scientists have tended to deter vocational ‘revolutionary’ scientists in favour of industrious and socially adept individuals better suited to incremental ‘normal’ science.
After reading this and researching on who the author is, I can only conclude that he’s never actually stepped foot in an academic/scientific research environment.
you think his argument about the impact of changing social filters is not correct? or rather that he doesn’t have the appropriate credentials to be making such an argument?
the author is editor in chief of this journal, so I suppose that puts him within a research-oriented organisation, if not quite the research Establishment 
!
Medical Hypotheses is a medical journal which provides a forum for unconventional ideas in medicine. The journal seeks to publish “radical ideas, so long as they are coherent and clearly expressed.” Submitted papers do not go through the peer review process. The editors choose which articles to publish on the basis of interest and importance in order to foster debate. The journal’s philosophy is that the authors, rather than peer reviewers or the editorial staff, hold responsibility for the integrity, precision and accuracy of their work.[1] (Medical Hypotheses - Wikipedia)
The journal was founded by David Horrobin. The original Editorial Board comprised: the double Nobel laureate Linus Pauling, the Nobel Laureate Sir Macfarlane Burnet, the philosopher Sir Karl Popper, the Nobel laureate in physiology Sir John Eccles and the acclaimed physiologist Arthur Guytoncitation needed]. Among others its mid-2008 board included Antonio Damasio, Vilayanur S. Ramachandran, David Healy and the Nobel laureate Arvid Carlsson.[2] (Medical Hypotheses - Wikipedia) The journal’s impact factor in 2007 was 1.276.[1] (Medical Hypotheses - Wikipedia) A spin-off journal Bioscience Hypotheses was launched in 2008.
I read about the journal and who this guy is. He has a PhD in psychiatry. 
What he writes about research environments, at least as far as the biological sciences are concerned, is totally off the mark. I don’t personally know any researcher who has gotten far and had success in their career that did anything by rote. The first major PhD I came to be acquainted with had his own lab by the time he was 30, which doesn’t come by working by the book or by following some old whinger’s rules.
Perhaps he’s talking about research in the other branches of science, which I have very little experience with, admittedly.
I can see the title might be a little insulting if one is in that line of work! I think it was intended to provoke discussion, but I certainly didn’t intend to hurt anyone’s feelings Seems to me that the critique was of the social filter generally (not of the representative scientist) and it might perhaps apply to academia more generally (not just the sciences).
In England in biochemistry, not so many people running labs at the age of thirty (and our PhDs are much quicker than those from the US). But there are obviously exceptions to the norm everywhere.