I (American) have the same reaction you do. I think this is an incident where something is not properly explained so non-Americans think this is just some weird

I (American) have the same reaction you do. I think this is an incident where something is not properly explained so non-Americans think this is just some weird American thing. The text " living and sleeping in the office is a terrible taboo and social stigma" is not phrased well. The issue with living at your office is much more due to liability reasons. If someone is allowed to live at their office, then the organization might be liable for anything that person does, or anything that happens to that person, even when not working. Also, as an organization it looks bad to have your graduate students / researchers be homeless, not to other grad students or researchers on an individual level, but in the sense that outsiders will react "I do not want to work at Harvard because they work their researchers so hard / pay their researchers so little that they have to live at their office." This also happened about 25 years ago, when there was more of a stigma in the US for living an untraditional lifestyle. It's much, much more common these days for people in their 20s to live semi-homeless (e.g. in a car) and housing usually costs a lot more know, adjusted for inflation.