I think you are probably smoking something worse.
First of all, neurosurgeons often recommend non-surgical treatment and wash their hands from consults, as in, nothing for them to do unless its truly bad e.g. SAH or ICH, in which case the person will have already sustained permanent damage and will have minimal symptomatic improvement from their deficit. Much of the neurosurgical consults are done for liability reasons rather than with the hope to "fix or cure." If you think so, you must be a PGY1 in neurosurgery at the best (and I'm being polite by saying this).
Second of all, your hysterical and laughable comment on neurosurgical research is breathtaking in and of itsself. Essentially every single one of those research topics you just mentioned, including "viral vectors for neurological disease, intra-thecal drugs, vascular interventions, Interventional vascular surgery, deep brain stimulation, brain implants for various disorders, sensory implants for paralyzed patients, transplantation..." were pioneered by NON-neurosurgeons. The majority of those were developed by basic science researchers, many of whom were neurologists or neurological researchers. Perhaps you should go and do some research on who came up with the first viral vector approach for the brain, the first intra-thecal proposition, the first sensory or motor-related implant, the first nerve-related transplantation, the first PET scan of the brain, the first transcranial magnetic stimulator, the first gamma-knife set-up, the first overexpression of transgenes in the brain, the first injection of pharmacological agents into parenchymal tissue or intra-ventricular injection, the first discovery of brain stem cells and the first animal model of transplant thereafter, the first blah blah blah .....and then you will realize that neurosurgeons were often used or will be used eventually as monkey to implement the tool onto humans. I can give you specific examples of publications if you are interested. Often the work came out of a neuroscience laboratory that was run either by a neuroscientist and/or a neurologist who then hand-picked their favorite neurosurgeon to collaborate with them on the clinical trial of the basic science protocol that the laboratory pioneered. The neurosurgeon could have been substituted in many of these cases. Technique is technique. But novel pioneered research is unique, ingenious, and requires a creative mind who can think diagnostically, therapeutically, and a clear understanding of neurological diseases and basic neuroscience at the molecular and cellular level. You want me to be more sarcastic about? Would you rather be a mechanic or would you rather be an engineer and designer? I'm not going to be childish about it because being childish is a sign of insecurity. But the bottom line is that clinicians work as a team, and true discovery of a medical breakthrough at the basic science level is not done by clinicians a large proportion of the time. Clinicians often do the translational research that bridges the discovery from rodents to eventually humans. And neurosurgeons are one of the last ones to implement this since very few do basic science research, among the 20+ neurosurgeons that I know, only 1 or 2 conducts research at the basic science level whereas the others implement discoveries done by the neurologists and neuroscientists.
Moreover, you say neurologists have limited options for research? How funny. The truth is almost the exact opposite. As neurologists, you have the option of pursuing very basic research that would only be possible if you were highly adept at very basic techniques acquired through years of basic science research, i.e. I don't see too many neurosurgeons doing molecular biology and cloning and making transgenic animals with highly cutting edge research on animals that has never ever been proposed. I do, however, see the neurosurgeon wondering if that already discovered and proposed topic would also work on humans. Well, no problem...that neurosurgeon doesn't have to think too hard, because if he/she cannot do the technique already described in animals then I'm sure there will be another 100 neurosurgeons would probably step and volunteer to perform the clinical trial. The lucky neurosurgeon would probably become a co-author on the study (not lead author and not the senior author....tsk tsk).
As for your other immature comments about neurologists having a bad lifestyle, that dumb comment is clearly based on ignorance. Perhaps you should go and shadow some internists and neurologists, both in the academic and private practice sector, and then compare the fields to realize how wrong your statement is.
