It seems to me that on lesswrong there is an overemphasis on status as a human motivator. For example, I think it's possible for a scientist to want to make an important discovery not to gain status in the scientific community but for the beauty of knowledge.

I think you miss the point of how status is related to motivation. Relatively few people actually think "I want status and so I will do X". Instead, they just actually want to do X because that is what they feel like doing. However when we wish to model or predict how humans will behave the status concept is powerful. "What would we expect people to do in this situation assuming they were optimized to do what would work to gain social status in their environment of adaptation?" often gives good predictions of what people will do.

Note that people's feelings and desires being real and sincere does not make a behavior less about status. Likewise, a behavior being about status does not make feelings and desires less 'real'.