Yep. If it were something deemed academically important, a lot more than a few hundred/thousand CPUs in a small community would be working on it. I'm not suggesting that this vein (prime chains) has no purpose or will have no purpose, but the amount of work being done on primecoin will not be significant. If it is found that these chains are of extreme importance for some reason, the work of primecoin could be overshadowed in a very short period of time.

I don't dislike primecoin, but it doesn't do an appreciable amount of work over a normal hashed coin. It might be a step along the road towards improving the value of hashing, but more than likely it is just making the botnets richer.

I would be more than happy to eat crow, but it shall remain to be seen.