Publishing good papers is not the problem, deluding yourself is.
Big +1 to this. Doing things you don’t see as a priority but which other people are excited about is fine. You can view it as kind of a trade: you work on something the research community cares about, and the research community is more likely to listen on (and work on) things you care about in the future.
But to make a difference you do eventually need to work on things that you find impactful, so you don’t want to pollute your own research taste by implicitly absorbing incentives or others opinions unquestioningly.
Big +1 to this. Doing things you don’t see as a priority but which other people are excited about is fine. You can view it as kind of a trade: you work on something the research community cares about, and the research community is more likely to listen on (and work on) things you care about in the future.
But to make a difference you do eventually need to work on things that you find impactful, so you don’t want to pollute your own research taste by implicitly absorbing incentives or others opinions unquestioningly.