Being a serious researcher is only good for stock picking if everyone else is going to come to the same conclusion, just more slowly. This is not true recently, what does meme stock performance have to do with serious peoples' opinion on Tesla?
Actually, value investing hasn't worked for a lot longer than that, and it's probably because everyone else can see what you can for a public stock.
Knowing the meme environment is a part of the subject area knowledge :)
I mean, understanding a bit about CPU architectures and chip production processes is needed to e.g. choose between INTC and AMD, and some knowledge about cell structures and mRNA is needed to decide whether to invest in MRNA. This knowledge is important, on top of understanding the balance sheet.
Actually, value investing hasn't worked for a lot longer than that, and it's probably because everyone else can see what you can for a public stock.