I think, in Physics, the key is not the discoveries, but the understanding.
It's often a single change in perception that unlocks a raft of related discoveries. Which also makes reasoning about such things hard, because once that perception shift has been identified, previously hard-to-understand things become easy, making the initial discovery look trivial.
That change in perception can happen from a small group of people or from a single person.
If this is truly a humanitarian issue, then then disable the contact harvesting feature