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As a postdoctoral research fellow in artificial intelligence at a large university, and an open source "Gentleman Scientist" in physics and science education through the open source science tricorder project in my evenings (I have two independent educational backgrounds), I think you've overstated the simplicity of things a great deal. I know you probably didn't mean it as such, but frankly the idea that I (as someone who spent 30 years in school to become an expert in my field) should only pursue research as a hobby after somehow becoming independently wealthy is absolutely ridiculous. It takes at least 10 years (4 years of undergrad, at least 5 years of one-on-one training in graduate school, and usually a 3-year postdoc) to take a bright high school graduate and train them to be a research scientist and the beginnings of an expert in a field. That's a huge amount of time and resources committed by a society in a highly competitive environment to some of its brightest individuals, and you're suggesting that afterwards they should simply pursue their research as a self-funded hobby because the society they live in has engaged in massive social program defunding (including education and scientific research, among other things) over the last decade in favor of tax cuts for the ultra-rich? Do you have any idea how much a decade of post-secondary education costs?

While it is true that some research can be done independently by one or two people with little equipment, and that historically some folks in those circumstances have made major advances (like the ones you mention), and other self-funded scientists will undoubtedly continue to in the future, this is exceptionally rare. Even significant progressive research building off the pieces of what came before it usually requires at least a small team of people, and a modest equipment budget. In the past the labs I've been in have had single pieces of fundamental equipment that cost as much as a small house. I do my research for the good of society, and generally for others to use. There is no way I could pursue my academic research on any independent budget that I will ever have. I spent most of my "extra" (non living-expenses) income from my academic job on open source research in my evenings as it is. It's not like $5k purchases a lot of research resources, it's an exceptionally tight and entirely self-funded budget.

You also bring up hackerspaces. I spend a good deal of time (when I'm not working on the open source tricorder project) helping teach folks how to design, make, and build at our local hackerspace. This is a fantastic resource for the community, and it's incredible to see people pick up new skills and walk out with something that they've put together over a day or a month, and every now and again a really interesting engineering start-up comes out of a hackerspace (like Makerbot). That being said, hackerspaces are primarily engineering centered and places for skill sharing making-related skills. I am unaware of a single case of any substantial piece of science coming out of a hackerspace in their entire history of existence -- but even if you could point to a dozen REALLY good papers that had come out of them, worldwide in the past decade, that's the same number of good papers that will come out of a medium-sized academic research institution in a day.

My mentor in grad school used to say that science is inherently a social discipline, and it took me a while to realize what he'd meant. Public research institutions like universities are filled with extremely bright and talented people who are (generally and largely) very good at churning out good and interesting research for exceptionally little cost compared to industry (Academic wages are generally half to a quarter of what they are in industry, it takes a month to write a grant that has any chance of being funded, and the equipment budgets are usually modest). The research in many cases is openly published and available

NOW we're talking. Do those exist?

It reminds me of this guys project...
http://www.tricorderproject.org/tricorder-mark2.html

http://www.tricorderproject.org/

The biggest flaw is that this is an expensive piece of custom equipment. No criticism of Dr. Jansen intended; he made the gadget he wanted to have. But I would like to see a design that is less expensive and mass-produced

Dr. Jansen agrees with you. From the Mark 2 Design Philosophy section:

Accessibility (cost): "To create something that was as inexpensive as possible, so that people might easily have access to them without having to worry about the cost".
Comment :: This is something I don't feel I did very well on. A ballpark estimate for the component cost of a single Mark 1 was about $500 when I constructed it, which feels like too much. For every household to have their own Tricorder, it feels like something around $100 to $200 is a more accessible price range, and to have one in every child's hand such that they might easily learn more about their worlds both in and (especially) outside of school, that number likely has to be under $50. Thankfully, much of the cost comes from sensors (which are rapidly decreasing in cost), and from PCB production (which is almost negligible in quantity).

Too bad CBS will likely kill this the same way they killed the free Android tricorder. They claim to own the LCARS interface.

Having checked out the project's page, it doesn't use LCARS, so that won't happen.

You didn't look at the page very much.

http://www.tricorderproject.org/tricorder-mark1.html

Clearly that is using the LCARS interface.

My bad; I was looking at the Mark 2, which uses Debian, and is totally different-looking. Really, though, the interface is a more-or-less trivial concern. Hell, we're not even talking about actual, concrete, user-interface issues, we're talking about a skin image that can be dropped onto the interface and trivially replaced with anything else you'd like at will. Furthermore, since there is more to the product then just such an image, it's not a question of 'shutting it down automatically with no real chance of appeal by way of a DMCA notice', it's more 'making vaguely threatening legalish noises which can be easily averted by officially advocating that people not use an infringing skin'.

Too bad CBS will likely kill this the same way they killed the free Android tricorder. They claim to own the LCARS interface.

Having checked out the project's page, it doesn't use LCARS, so that won't happen.

You didn't look at the page very much.

http://www.tricorderproject.org/tricorder-mark1.html

Clearly that is using the LCARS interface.