I’m not sure whether this is true of chemistry, but the research process you describe certainly sounds plausible. As you say, there may be many cases in which the distribution of labor doesn’t matter, because researching different theories looks the same. One area in which researching different theories looks different is research into what killed the dinosaurs. Producing geological evidence relevant to the hypothesis that volcanoes killed the dinosaurs means digging at different sites from those you would investigate for evidence about whether a meteor killed the dinosaurs. There might be sites that contain evidence relevant to both, but for the most part, research is planned by using the data we already have to look at sites where we expect to find volcanic ash or meteorite craters.
If everyone was satisfied with the answer that the meteor killed the dinosaurs, we’d miss out on the ways that volcanic activity contributed to the extinction event.
Some evidence in support of this hypothesis (and by extension, Zvi’s claim that mazes are on the rise) is the prevalence of oligopolies in America and the world. It’s hard to buy affordable food without indirectly buying from Nestle for example, and in many of America’s food deserts the only nearby place to buy food in the first place is a supermarket that’s part of a massive chain. Most Americans have only 1-3 options when it comes to internet service providers, and media companies like Disney routinely buy or merge with their competition (which somewhat prevents startups from being as disruptive to deep hierarchies as they could otherwise be).
Even when people choose to buy from individuals, they often do so through corporate mediators. For example, to reach an audience, an indie musician will probably upload their music to DistroKid which will allow people to download or stream the music through other corporate platforms; in some sense, this makes the musicians beholden in some way to the whims of DistroKid’s and other corporations’ whims. Similarly, people who design their own crafts or clothing can sell them online independently, but much of this business takes place through a platform like Etsy or Redbubble which likewise introduces a maze to an otherwise individualized and direct process/transaction. Ridesharing services, Airbnb, and the rise of the “gig economy” fit into the same pattern of individual, atomically voluntary participation at the bottom of what is ultimately a deep hierarchy.
Thus, there may be fewer giant corporations in America than there were 60-70 years ago, but those that remain seem to have deeper hierarchies than ever because incentive structures favor participation in corporate hierarchies even in a culture of independence and self-sufficiency. In that sense, I think your intuition that incentive structures overpower cultural influence is correct, but I disagree about which element favors/disfavors mazes.