Many people, and I am one, regard grad school as a professional position. Nominally you are there to do your own research and make your own decisions, under adv

Many people, and I am one, regard grad school as a professional position. Nominally you are there to do your own research and make your own decisions, under advisement of a professor. (I can see some exceptions for a new graduate student who is still doing coursework, but in this case the student had passed the qualifying examination.) As such, grad students don't really "drop out", just like employees don't really "drop out" of a job when they quit, nor unpaid elected officials don't "drop out" of office when they resign, nor volunteers drop out when they stop doing volunteer work. Personally I think there was a mistake in the logic. Success as an academic may by related to the number of citations one gets, but it's not a factor which affects one's graduate career. Only the handful of people in your graduation committee needs to be convinced about the work, and once you have the PhD there's no continue on that topic, or stay in academia.