I dont really understand it, but they solved it just fine where the researchers was failed.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/09/110918144955.htm
Maybe you interested to help the researcher while need sometime to kill
http://fold.it/
that doesn't surprise me
sometimes, the guys with PhD's look too hard at a subject
There is such thing as being too close to a problem to understand it.
I am guilty of this sometimes. I get a bug on my program and end thinking a 100 things that could cause it. After some search, it usually turns out to be a 1 line typo. If I had less knowledge of that could have being wrong, I could have found the bug on less time.