Yes. Though even philosophy, which doesn't have the "real world" iteration that science does, arguably doesn't have the problems of pure mathematics.
Pure mathematicians create ever more abstractions and get lost in solving puzzles on how these abstractions logically relate to each other. But since these abstractions don't have any relevance outside of pure mathematics, it's an entirely self-referential game, like chess. Except that nobody confuses being a professional chess player with being a noble researcher.
Even in philosophy, at least analytic philosophy, that issue of getting lost in your own abstractions doesn't really exist. Because analytic philosophy doesn't analyze its own concepts, it analyzes the concepts that already exist in natural language. Like truth, knowledge, probability, causation, belief, desire, consciousness, rationality and so on. These concepts come from outside of philosophy, and they have independent relevance for non-philosophers.
In contrast, pure mathematics seems to be the part of mathematics that only has relevance to pure mathematicians. Similar to how a game like chess has only relevance to chess players, not to anything entirely unrelated to chess. But again, people who are into mastering some game or sport are fully aware that what they are trying to master is a self-contained game, or sport, not something that increases the amount of human knowledge beyond that.