How did I come to Computer Science? Through geophysics! I was once given data sets spanning several CD-ROMs. Back then, this was a lot of data! To this day, my research is still inspired by this short gig in geophysics. I keep trying to bridge mathematics and software implementations.

This warped path was beneficial to me. I still feel the need to keep my brain on its toes. In Mapping the evolution of scientific ideas, Herrera et al. suggests that this strategy might be sound:

(…) communities that are more willing to reinvent themselves tend to be the ones that have most impact per paper (…) our analysis shows that communities with a higher fitness tend to be short-lived.

Good researchers  need to be exposed to strange or surprising ideas and problems. Attending the same conference year after year does not count.

Malicious authors know how to get past peer review without effort:

• Pretend to have run extensive experiments supporting your theories. When the experiments contradict you or are merely difficult to explain, clean them out conveniently. Nobody will try to reproduce your experiments on the short run.
• Do not think through the deep and complicated issues: reviewers only have a few days at the most to review your papers anyhow!
• Pick your problems and experiments so as to make the problem as elegant as possible. Do not bother yourself with nasty (but important) details: they will merely get in the way of getting your paper accepted.

Peer review is meant to help you generate better results. Listen to the reviewers.  Peers are (potentially nasty and ill-tempered) advisors. Convince yourself that your work is good, even under some scrutiny.

Remember: your research program is more than the sum of your papers. Many useless researchers wrote many more papers (and got larger grants) than Shannon or  Feynman. Don’t write papers whose only virtue is that they may eventually get past peer review. It is a depressing goal.