(If someone actually does come up with a new teachable supertrick, so that civilization itself is about to take another lurching step forward, then you should expect to have a lot of fellow superstars by the time you're done learning!)

Not necessarily. There are a lot of people who claim to have the next supertrick. I wouldn't be surprised if the next actual supertrick isn't as heavily promoted as the fakes. So it might be worthwhile to do research in areas that seem promising but neglected.

Bayesian statistics used to be pretty obscure, I hear.