New Testament conjectural emendation: Folly or duty?

Over the centuries, hundreds of scholars have engaged in New Testament conjectural emendation. Together they have proposed more than six thousand conjectures—that is, on average, almost one for every verse. Yet to most New Testament textual critics, today and in the past, the Greek New Testament does not need conjectures, except as a last resort for a small number of complex cases. Moreover, until recently, the few conjectures more commonly known were only those that happened to be listed in the apparatus of former Nestle editions. Since it can be presumed, on the one hand, that the conjectural critics were not foolish but acting out of a sense of duty, the question arises why their work has been so marginalized. But since, on the other hand, the vast majority of conjectures still fail to convince anyone except their authors, the question also arises concerning what value can possibly lay in the painstaking collection and study of conjectures and their authors.