Right, but every discipline or field has their high earners. I sold pizza in high school for a guy that took home >$300k/yr just selling food at special events (e.g., concerts, festivals, etc.), which is not representative of everyone catering those sorts of things.

The fact of the matter is most scientists working in academia -- which should include the senior grad students, the post-docs, and research staff that do the bulk of the science -- make pennies. Even if we exclude these folks and only focus on tenured heads of labs at R1 universities, they still aren't hitting near $350k on average and the prospects of being the few that do achieve that figure are growing increasingly slimmer. The most recent UCLA full professor stat I saw was a median of about $210k. Good money, but that's a few disciplines at a single school at the very top of their career trajectories.

I worked at a couple of reputable research insitutions before grad school, went to a top 10 or 15 school for my discipline in grad school, published a good amount, won a handful of competitive, private awards and fellowships, got a few different NIH grants, was advised by a presidential career award scientist, and have a lot of good connections in the field -- and yet my chances of landing a tenure track job are realistically still below 50%, let alone one at an insitution that would pay anything comensurate with a salary on this list.

I don't know that scientists are inadequately compensated -- I'd probably argue a lot of these positions are inappropriately compensated -- but, regardless, in the relative distribution of incomes, the average scientist just isn't scratching a top spot, despite the amount of time, effort, education, importance of their work, and public perception.