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gjm comments on Research is polygamous! The importance of what you do needn't be proportional to your awesomeness - Less Wrong Discussion
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This is the same mistaken pattern of thinking that leads people not to give to charitable causes on the grounds that poverty, or malaria, or whatever, is such a huge problem that anything they could do would be just a drop in the bucket. Of course what matters is the actual amount of good done, not what fraction it is of all the good there is to do or of the good others are doing.
I wouldn't call it the same pattern at all. There's no difference in comparative advantage between one monetary donation and another, and charities targeting causes such as malaria and poverty don't suffer diminishing returns on donations within the range they're likely to receive. On the other hand the differences in comparative advantage between one researcher and another within a particular field can be quite large, and a research subject can quite plausibly suffer diminishing returns on new researchers of similar abilities (see this quote already linked to in this topic.)