Yeah, honestly go to any conference in the last decade and you'll see some people who are just... out of place in an academic, like, when they were 19 they list

Yeah, honestly go to any conference in the last decade and you'll see some people who are just... out of place in an academic, like, when they were 19 they listened to a podcast that claimed PhDs made XX% more money, so they decided to do that. These people don't care about research, don't care to understand research, they just want to publish, get their degree, and get paychecks from Google/Facebook/Apple. Luckily I've seen a number of these types of people fail to find any high profile jobs after they graduate, so I guess something is still working.