Nothing to do with schmoozing, everything to do with scholarly integrity.
That extrapolation notwithstanding, what exactly do you think "shmoozing" means? In academia it does not mean going to your committee's cocktail parties and letting them win at golf. It means citing their work (i.e. "demonstrating that you have studied prior research") so that they can then use the fact that they are highly referenced to advance their own careers.
During the exam, in addition to the expected technical questions, I was asked things like, "What lab did this work come out of? Who runs that lab?"
In other words, "Do you understand the political and funding environment in which you're going to be operating if you continue working in this field?" Fortunately, I had been to a few conferences and met some of these people (also not an accident on the part of my professors), so I knew the answers to these questions. But the lesson stuck.