If disproving a widely held theory is the only way for a scientist to become famous, then why is Neil deGrass Tyson famous? Nye the science guy? Leonardo Di Vinci, Nikola Tesla, Albert Einstein, Elon Musk, Marie Curie, Thomas Edison, Stephen Hawking, Michael Faraday etc... etc...

In this day and age, you can get famous in the science community simply by publishing something on behalf of a media company, or someone with ties to a media company. Whether what you publish is legitimate or not is besides the point. Society has become a you scratch my back, I'll scratch yours sorta place. Truth doesn't matter at all anymore. Only agendas.

Perhaps there are high-level scientists who have their own suspicions of the flat Earth, but are smart enough to know that to mention it, or to begin investigating it, would be the end of their careers because they would be called crazy and have their credibility stripped from them.