I think you’re misapplying the method. “Pay $8 to spend an hour on anything”—you’re counting the cost twice: one time spending the money, and the second spending the time. Maybe a better metric would be “I’d rather be paid $8 for spending an hour doing exactly nothing”.
I may be wrong, though.
It was done by Doyle himself. In 1898 he published two short stories—“The Lost Special” and “The Man with the Watches”, where “an amateur reasoner of some celebrity” participates in solving a crime mystery and fails. It was written after Doyle killed off Sherlock, so he is probably parodying the character—he was quite tired with him at the time.