Progress depends on the fool and the greater fool. The only way to be right always is to not take a position at all. Progress depends on people believing that the world can change for the better in unimaginable ways. Taking a position on unimaginable progress can appear foolish for pretty long periods of time and can ultimately also turn out to be foolish in retrospect. To be a pioneer you have to run the risk of being foolish.
Hype gets created automatically when someone credibly takes on a problem that most think cannot be done. The only way to sidestep is to do what Andrew Wiles did with the Fermat last theorem - but that might not be a valid strategy for a problem that requires more than a small team.