Good science is all about ideas, and anyone can have those.
Coincidentally, I was just discussing this very concept with a scientist friend of mine yesterday. We both agreed that there is a public misconception about what makes good science, particularly a belief that coming up with original ideas is the fundamental concept, which is simply untrue.
As you said, anyone can have ideas. But that's the easy part. Knowing how to process those ideas is where the science comes in. The reality is, the vast majority of new or original ideas, regardless of who comes up with them, are wrong and it takes the "sieve" of the scietific method (in all its complexity) to eliminate the bad ideas, revealing the few useful ones.
One particular example is the idea being promoted by Elon Musk that we can set up a self sustaining human colony on Mars that might serve as a hedge against humanity going extinct on Earth.
Musk has a degree in engineering, which technically puts him among the ranks of professional scientists, but his idea of a self sustaining colony on Mars being feasible with technology available to us within the next few centuries is simply unrealistic. He's basing his belief on the assumption that all we need to do is solve a few engineering problems and we'll be good to go.
But, the problem is not one of engineering new technology. It's a much more fundamental obstacle of living on a planet that lacks adequate air, food, water, and many other resources, without having a critical mass of people necessary to maintain that highly advanced technology without it being supplied by constant delivery of materials and products from Earth.
The more complicated and advanced technology that exists, the greater the number of people needed to maintain it.
Realistically, a viable, self sustaining Mars colony would require at least a few hundred million people simply to keep the existing life maintaining technology in good working order.
I partly blame a popular quote from Einstein for the public misconception. He famously stated, "Imagination is more important than knowledge."
He was trying to make a statement about the value of original thinking when trying to solve problems that have long been unresolved through conventional methods.
Unfortunately, it's taken on a much broader meaning and is commonly interpreted as describing a kind of "new age" inspired concept where the road to knowledge is constructed by brainstorming new ideas, and the more bizarre the better.
What science is really about is systematically putting ideas through a process of skeptical inquiry, where you're really trying to
disprove your idea. No good scientist ever sets about trying to find facts that support their idea, no matter how fondly they might think of it.
They go out of their way to find any possible flaw in their idea. Because if they don't, then their colleagues almost certainly will.
