I agree with your main point. But there are plenty of PHDs out there working on projects doomed for failure. That is actually one of the main reasons why my bro

I agree with your main point. But there are plenty of PHDs out there working on projects doomed for failure. That is actually one of the main reasons why my brother left organic chemistry research to become a software engineer (the cutthroat abuse of peer review was another). He was tired of all the people getting grants for projects doomed to fail. Sure some of them might accidentally stumbling onto something useful but he became tired of all research in this field into known dead ends.