Which time period Are we talking about? In the modern day way, way more discoveries are made by professionals than hobbyists. Not all of them get big flashy news stories. Some people work all of their lives to discover something that increases solar efficiency by 2%. The days of Newton and Einstein are gone and done with. We have thousands of researchers at the same or more intelligent as those guys. The problem is that we’ve discovered all the easy answers already. All that’s left is the super hard ones. Again, it’s not impossible that some random person stumbles upon it. But it is highly unlikely.
Your feelings are valid. It sucks to be in a world where you’re probably not going to be a Newton or Einstein and modern academics and research is not without its problems.